Haile Menkerios on engaging with the powerful

Former freedom fighter turned UN diplomat, Haile Menkerios, recounts his role in Eritrea’s war of independence and the devastation of being exiled from the country he had fought to create. Reflecting on how his approach as a mediator in Sudan, South Sudan and beyond was shaped by his own experience of war, he stresses the importance of talking to everyone and urges us to “never stop believing in a better future”.