Vincenzo Di Meglio - Political Accomplishments

Political Accomplishments

Vincenzo Di Meglio was appointed Director of the C.R.I.E (Comitato Rappresentativo degli Italiani dell’Eritrea), the main organization of the Italians in Eritrea during the British rule after 1941.

He was friend of Eritrean politicians, like Woldeab Woldemariam and Abdel Kader Kebir, who promoted the independence of Eritrea during the British occupation. As a consequence he suffered some murderous attacks from the so called Scifta terrorists, but survived without harm.

Dr. Di Meglio was one of the main authorities in Eritrea who opposed the British tentative to divide Eritrea between Sudan and Ethiopia after 1945. He obtained in 1947 the dismissal of this project by the United Nations (wanted mainly by the British to enlarge their Sudan with most of northern Eritrea) with his continuous pressure on the Latinoamerican representatives (like those of Haiti) at the ONU: by only one vote -exactly the one of Haiti- Eritrea was not divided between Sudan and Ethiopia.

But later was unsuccessful -as a representative even of independist Eritrean organizations- when he went to New York to talk in the United Nations against the annexation of Eritrea to Ethiopia as a federated province in 1950. In the ONU Vincenzo Di Meglio promoted (even in agreement with the Italian government) the "Fiduciary Administration" by Italy until 1960 of an independent Eritrea, to be done in a similar way to that of Italian Somalia .

In 1951 Dr. Di Meglio created the Casa degli Italiani ("House of the italians)" in Asmara as the center for the remaining members of the Italian Eritreans. In recent years the "Casa" has been proposed to be named with his name.