Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers report that during compulsory national service they experienced torture, inhumane or degrading treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labor and abusive conditions, a U.N. independent investigator on human rights said in a report circulated Monday.

Mohamed Babiker said Eritrea has a policy of indefinite national service, including a civil service component and a military service component. He said it has ignored numerous calls from human rights bodies to ensure legal limits for the duration of such service and to protect the human rights of all participants.

While Eritrea maintains its national service program is “unfairly judged,” Babiker said he continues to receive “numerous and credible reports of grave human rights violation in the context of forced national/military service.”

Conscientious objection is not allowed in Eritrea, he said, “and deserters and draft evaders continued to be subjected to arbitrary detention in highly punitive conditions, enforced disappearance and torture.”

Human rights groups describe Eritrea as one of the world’s most repressive countries. Since winning independence from Ethiopia three decades ago, the small Horn of Africa nation has been led by President Isaias Afwerki, who has never held an election.

Babiker said Afwerki has refused to implement the 1997 constitution and governs the country without the rule of law and without any division of powers, checks or balances or constraints on his power.

The special investigator said his interviews with Eritrean asylum-seekers and refugees point to indefinite national service as the main driver of people leaving Eritrea.

“The national service program, which was ostensibly put in place for the furtherance of national development, is in practice undermining development by forcing young persons to leave the country,” Babiker said in the report to the U.N. General Assembly covering the 12-month period through April 24.