Analysis by Lauren Carruth and Lahra Smith/WP
Why do so many people — even young mothers — risk everything to leave? Our ethnographic research in the Horn of Africa, including interviews with female migrants and the people and organizations assisting them, provides some insight.
What’s happening in Ethiopia is part of a larger trend. Around the world, many people fleeing violence in their home countries see little choice but to risk dangerous and clandestine journeys abroad. And while many are seeking employment, our research finds that, more fundamentally, they are escaping political and personal violence in Ethiopia.
One woman we interviewed, Ayyantu, said she wanted to leave Ethiopia to find work, but also because of what she called “forced villagization,” or forced displacement, in the verdant eastern highlands of the country. Local officials had stolen her family’s livestock and other belongings, she said, and accused them of treasonous political activism. She and her brother decided she should go to Saudi Arabia for a housekeeping or child care job. Her brother helped save money for a “delala” — a guide — to help her cross the desert expanses and international borders. (The names of interview subjects have been changed to protect their privacy.)
Some Oromo Ethiopians who experienced threats or persecution at home, like Ayyantu and her family, seek asylum in towns and refugee camps scattered throughout Djibouti. But Djibouti’s arid landscapes and remote camps offer little in the way of economic or resettlement opportunities. Ali Addeh camp, for example, remains underfunded, and it’s located far from industrial, educational or transportation hubs. The climate is dry, hot and unfit for farming
The Markazi refugee camp, on the northeastern coast of Djibouti, is only a few miles from a bustling port. Yet there’s little shade in the camp, where temperatures regularly top 110 degrees Fahrenheit and dust storms regularly upend residential structures.
Women we’ve interviewed who are fleeing violence and threats of persecution in Ethiopia often decline to live in desolate camps like these. Instead, they want to migrate elsewhere, to find work in countries where their labor is in high demand.
Popular destination countries for Ethiopian labor migrants, like Saudi Arabia, have not signed the Refugee Convention, a U.N. treaty that recognizes the human rights of people to seek asylum from persecution. These countries do not designate or recognize refugees as such and often do not guarantee them special protections or benefits. Many refugees live and work in these countries without legal status or documentation, which means they are subject to deportation and exploitation.
More than a year before we met her, Ayyantu and three of her female friends packed into a car and rode 300 miles nonstop to the Ethiopian border with Djibouti. They got out of the car at night and walked across a remote stretch of desert, guided by a delala, and then got back in the same car, on the other side of the border. They were then driven two more hours to the town of Dikhil in the middle of Djibouti — nowhere near the Red Sea coast.
The delala then abandoned them. The four women found themselves trapped in Dikhil, without money or formal assistance, for the next year. They were forced to beg and take small jobs to survive.
Ayyantu described how memories of her sister, who had left Ethiopia 10 years earlier, kept her going. But Ayyantu refused to accept rumors of her sister’s struggles and instead imagined her living freely and happily in Saudi Arabia.
Ayyantu finally called her sister for help but was wired only enough money to pay for another delala to guide the friends by foot approximately 180 miles, along remote and mountainous trails, to an IOM transit center in northeastern Djibouti where they could get a plane ticket back home to Ethiopia.
Ayyantu and many other Ethiopians migrate abroad to escape violence. But most of the women we spoke to also expressed desires for opportunity and freedom — even adventure. In addition to escape, they wanted the chance, power and means to “build their own house,” as one woman phrased it.
Many Ethiopians — and people all around the world — continue to face violence and persecution at home. Refugee camps often offer refugees little hope of a better life. And opportunities for resettlement for African refugees in Europe and North America remain nearly impossible to access.
Without viable camps to seek refuge in, without countries that will resettle and protect them and without visas for work abroad, people like Ayyantu fleeing violence cross borders illegally and seek new lives wherever they can. And they survive these journeys not because of assistance or protection from governments, for the most part, but instead by drawing on informal networks of support — paid guides, family members and friends.
Lauren Carruth is a medical anthropologist who studies humanitarian response, global health, displacement and nutrition. She is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University and author of “Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region” (Cornell University Press, 2021).
Lahra Smith is a political scientist who studies citizenship, migration and political development in Africa. She is an associate professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University and director of the African Studies Program.
Wow! A medical anthropologist and a political scientist collaborate on such a scanty, uninformative and, in factt, misleading piece. True, the Oromo are the majority heading east. But why this disproportionate migration of the Oromo when in fact the persecution and violence is far worse on other ethnic groups? Can an Amhara woman, for example, head “east” and make it alive to a camp in Djibouti? How about a Konso female? Or an Amarro woman? Why is it that few of the over million Amhara displaced by ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence are crossing international borders? Multifaceted factors are in operation to push the Oromo towards migration and a very complicated human trafficking network exacerbates the push from population pressure, political persecution, inflation and violence.
“Ethiopians see illegal migration as the only escape from violence” Analysis by Lauren Carruth and Lahra Smith/WP, July 20, 202
Humble Commentary, 20 July 2022
What a tragedy!!!
Ethiopians fleeing out from their beloved country.
The unexpected is happening.
Ethiopians forgetting their HISTORY
Emperors, Kings, Warriors would be moving in their graves
What is very sad in Ethiopia is not the ACT itself but the source of the upheaval.
VERY HARD as it may be to believe, it is just personal ambition of an individual who is causing the upheaval in Ethiopia. YES, very hard to believe, but the FACTS are there on solid rocks for everyone to see.
An individual lost his ambition to be the LEADER of ETHIOPIA as a whole. ALAS!!!! HE FAILED and an unknown, very, very, very young fellow, took it, with smile, in broad day light. Obviously, the development was not acceptable to the loser who is loaded with all sorts of academic papers. YES, the loss was too much for the most educated person on the Globe, who is known in various international universities around the Globe. The reaction is understandable. After all, we are dealing with HUMAN BEINGS, the simpleton creature of the ALL MIGHTY GOD UP UP UP in HEAVEN.
Good Luck to the very young WINNER & ETHIOPIA ; and, at the same time, quick recovery to the LOSER (if it is possible!!!!).
THAT IS LIFE. THE END
The area from where one of those interviewed Ayyantu came from sounds to be from the Western Hararghe where Chercher Highlands are located and where most members of my Itu clan reside. In the interview she has told these two trouble making foreigners the following:
‘One woman we interviewed, Ayyantu, said she wanted to leave Ethiopia to find work, but also because of what she called “forced villagization,” or forced displacement, in the verdant eastern highlands of the country. Local officials had stolen her family’s livestock and other belongings, she said, and accused them of treasonous political activism. She and her brother decided she should go to Saudi Arabia for a housekeeping or child care job. Her brother helped save money for a “delala” — a guide — to help her cross the desert expanses and international borders. (The names of interview subjects have been changed to protect their privacy.) I called my merchant relatives in the capital and asked them if any forced ‘villagization’ has taken place in that area and they don’t know what I was talking about or why did I ask the question. I told him about this report and they told me that most of these ‘refugees’ are intensely coached in what to say when they reach outside the country.
Such made up of story is rampant these days. I recently listened to an interview by one of these day dreamers who want to yank away my Oromia just to found their personal fiefdom. This dreamer was telling bold face lie during an interview telling the host that there were thousands of Oromos who were just murdered by the Abiy Government and his Neftegna (the new catchword these days is ‘Fano’) allies. That lie was intentional because the claim was made right after innocent farmers were butchered in Tole. It was meant to justify the savagery as if it was done in spontaneous retaliation. Mind you, this person is highly educated and in a leadership position. I think the number used was 3,000 or 5,000 of Oromos murdered. I heard that right after that interview some major foreign media outlets tried to verify the numbers but could not find any evidence about that. Over the last several years I myself have come across such false claims being made by ‘well read’ individuals. What they are doing is the more times they tell lies some of will stick. One of them was telling her readers how her 82 year old grandma was dragged out of her bed and shot dead by the Woyanes. The village she was talking about does exist in Ethiopia but not in Oromia. It is a small village in the Southern Region right on the border with South Sudan where no Oromos exist. Then you could see several heart-felt sympathies for that liar. I kept and still keep wondering how these liars go to bed and sleep well. I think the more lies they tell they themselves would start believing their own made up stories. But they have not been without success in finding believers. Our good earth has plenty of gullible individuals and they connivers know very well how to exploit them. I think these days it is not what you learn in college that matters most but it is how you talk when come back. These days I have been reading made up stories by these bold face liars posting on their social media platforms made up news of hundreds of innocent Oromos massacred in Wello. They posted such lies after they heard that those who were massacred in Tole were mostly Muslim Amharas from Wello. Unbelievable!!!