Blog post by Dr Georgia Cole, Chancellor’s Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh; Dr Milena Belloni, Research Professor, MIGLOBA, Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp; and Dr Aron Hagos Tesfai, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
For the past few decades, the countries bordering Eritrea have provided relatively reliable and generous refuge to hundreds of thousands of Eritreans who have fled indefinite national service, persecution and economic malaise in their country of origin.
Many Eritreans have resided in cities and settlements across these countries – most notably Sudan and Ethiopia – for years and even decades. They have built families and pursued business activities, and have had no immediate intention, ability or opportunities to move on.
In the last few years, however, the wars in Tigray and Sudan and the violent instability across Ethiopia have led to widespread secondary displacement of Eritreans within and from these countries. Meanwhile, the number of opportunities for Eritreans to reach or reside in other major destinations – including the European Union (EU), Israel and Saudi Arabia – have also markedly declined over the past decade. This has pushed some Eritreans to leave these places or, in the case of the EU, resulted in far fewer Eritreans attempting to reach it via once extremely popular routes.
Two new reports that the authors of this piece have produced for the Mixed Migration Centre, a global network researching mixed migration, explore the effects of these shrinking spaces of refuge for Eritrean refugees. The report asks: Where are Eritreans looking for refuge now? What are their experiences in these new sites and countries of asylum? And how might governments and international organisations better support secondarily displaced Eritrean refugees fleeing insecurity and conflict?
The study is based on more than fifty online interviews conducted with recently displaced Eritreans from Ethiopia and Sudan and key informants between June and November 2024. The respondents’ journeys were extremely complex, be they within or between countries. Some people who fled the war in Tigray had to return to Eritrea before leaving again through Sudan and finally ending up back in Ethiopia. Others fled from Khartoum to camps in Sudan’s Kassala region, only to realise that the situation was too unsafe for them to stay – so they moved on to safer cities in the area.
Generally speaking, secondarily displaced Eritreans appear to be relocating from across Ethiopia, Sudan, Israel and Saudi Arabia towards major cities including Kampala in Uganda, Cairo in Egypt, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Juba in South Sudan. Here we highlight some key findings and recommendations arising from their experiences.
Finding #1: Protection in camps in remote areas is failing throughout the Horn of Africa, and cities are increasingly becoming the only available sites where Eritreans can access basic levels of safety, services and legal support. At the same time, Eritreans experience several challenges in these cities linked to the cost of living, access to documentation and services, and heightened visibility – hence their vulnerability to detention and deportation.
There has clearly been a dramatic deterioration of living and security conditions in refugee camps across Sudan and Ethiopia, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and national authorities have had a limited presence and even less control. When war in Tigray broke out in November 2020, for example, the camps that were not outright destroyed in the violence, such as Hitsats and Shimelba, were largely left without food, water and medical support. Even the newly established camps in Ethiopia lack basic security and humanitarian capacity, and there are concerns that their locations may foment further ethnic and political tensions between Eritreans and the surrounding Ethiopian communities amidst the country’s delicate ethnic federalist arrangement. Mahari, a father of four who eventually moved to Cairo, describes the dearth of opportunities to access protection in camps across Sudan and Ethiopia:
‘When we left Khartoum we got refuge in a church in Gedaref [in Sudan]… After two months UNHCR re-opened a refugee camp called Um Gargour near the border town… Living conditions in the refugee camp were difficult. There was a lack of basic services, no hospital, and cholera was spreading. I was in constant contact with some of my friends who were in Metema and Dabat refugee camps [in Ethiopia]. They told me that conditions were worse and advised me not to come. There was war in the Amhara region as well. Then I decided to come to Cairo.‘
Mahari (49-year-old man in Cairo, Egypt)
Eritreans’ trust in governmental and humanitarian organisations, including UNHCR, as sources of ‘protection’ also appears to have been further eroded. Respondents who lived in these refugee camps repeatedly referenced feelings of abandonment. They also shared experiences of having their expectations raised about what they would be able to obtain from humanitarian organisations if they reached a particular location – in terms of their ability to access protection, services and documentation – but these were not met, with dangerous consequences. They noted that corruption and extortion by national refugee agencies, such as the police in Kenya and the Office of the Prime Minister in Uganda, have further delegitimised the entire humanitarian architecture.
There are many reasons why cities – particularly Addis Ababa, Kampala and Cairo – have become Eritreans’ preferred locations to access much-needed opportunities and services. UNHCR data suggests there are now more than 70,000 Eritrean refugees living in Addis Ababa, and key informants suggest that 11,000 Eritreans arrived in Kampala in the first six months of 2024. Some 8,000 individuals entered Cairo over a similar timeframe, adding to the existing, sizable population of Eritreans there. Respondents noted that cities allowed some access to livelihood opportunities, schools and further education; aid from refugee-led and limited humanitarian organisations; and, perhaps most importantly, the infrastructure to follow up on resettlement, family reunification and private sponsorship ‘processes’.
There are nonetheless numerous and rising challenges with regard to relying on these cities to accommodate displaced Eritreans. Respondents widely noted that the cost of living in these cities has significantly increased in recent years. For example, they reported monthly living expenses ranging between USD$150 and USD$250 in Addis Ababa, between USD$150 and USD$200 in Cairo, and upwards of USD$300 in Kampala for individuals who share their rental and living costs with friends.
While press releases and media articles have pointed out the same, key informants further highlighted the increasing arbitrary detentions and deportations of Eritrean nationals in Addis Ababa and Cairo as of late. One informant reported that 1,300 Eritreans were detained in 2023 in Ethiopia, many with valid IDs, and that these detentions and deportations were concentrated in the capital. In Cairo, Eritreans described deportations as an everyday reality, and there are concerns the situation might worsen if bilateral cooperation with Eritrea grows.
In Kampala, parliamentarians have started raising concerns about how Eritreans are reshaping parts of the city’s urban economy, perceived as to the disadvantage of Ugandan nationals. They have begun asking whether the country can continue to accommodate Eritreans at the rapid rate by which they are arriving.
Finally, respondents encountered several problems registering their statuses in cities. Policies that prevent new and old refugees from accessing registration, valid IDs or assistance in cities form part of national strategies to discourage the urbanisation of refugee populations. Given the failings of camps across the region, however, this position requires reconsideration.
Finding #2: Respondents’ desire to stay in countries of asylum across North, East and the Horn of Africa is heavily influenced by their ability to access identity documents and to be able to regularise their status in these countries, as well as their ability to access opportunities for safe and legal onward mobility.
The explosion of conflicts in the region has severely affected Eritreans’ access to key files, forms of identification and administrative processes. As a result of suddenly fleeing locations, individuals have lost their identification papers, making it more difficult for them to access basic assistance in the places to which they have moved. Resettlement files, family reunification processes and opportunities for scholarships abroad have been interrupted and become, at times, unrecoverable due to the destruction or inactivity of the responsible bureaus, lost or non-existent paperwork, or the fact that relevant agencies are simply not functioning.
Ruta, for example, had to forfeit a scholarship opportunity when the fighting in Sudan, and her subsequent displacement, made it impossible to take up:
‘While waiting for my travel documents, the war [in Khartoum] broke out. We had electricity and internet problems, so I couldn’t contact anyone—neither the university [in Germany, where Ruta had obtained a scholarship]… nor my family in Eritrea. After leaving Sudan, I went to Metema Camp in Ethiopia, where there was no internet for the entire year I stayed there. After coming to Addis Ababa, it’s been over a year, and my scholarship has expired. This means I would have to start the process all over again.‘
Ruta (31-year-old woman in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
The need – but frequent inability – to regularise one’s status in order to access basic rights and pursue long-term resettlement possibilities has pushed many respondents to make dangerous and costly journeys across borders.
It has also heightened the risk, as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, that Eritreans will feel compelled to approach the Eritrean government for support if they cannot access documentation proving their requests for asylum or confirming their refugee status. Approaching the Eritrean government nonetheless risks ‘expos[ing] them to harassment and coercion [including the requirement to pay the two percent diaspora tax]’. Respondents in Ethiopia further highlighted the challenges of regularising one’s status via a passport and visa – rather than through asylum – as doing so requires individuals to pay ongoing fees to renew these documents or risk being charged huge overstay costs.
Finding #3: The outbreak of conflict or worsening violence across the Horn of Africa and North Africa, combined with countries’ stricter border policies, have further endangered Eritreans on the move by disrupting transport routes and established smuggling networks that were embedded in migrant communities. In certain locations, this has led to more precarious journeys, more predatory business models and less reliable ‘service delivery’.
The spread of conflict and violence across the region has made it both more essential for Eritreans in precarious situations and locations to move but also, in many cases, more dangerous and expensive. A major determinant of this has been that warring factions across Sudan and Ethiopia have taken control of critical transport linkages between different parts of these countries and at their external borders, and established checkpoints to police and limit the movement of refugee populations. This has reduced the number of options available for using regular, more affordable transport links, and hence required more individuals to procure smugglers’ services to undertake a wider range of journeys.
At the same time, specific smuggling routes across the region have been forced to shut, shift and/or adapt due to violence, changes in Eritreans’ ability to access international capital or because they became specific targets of police operations. In Tigray, for example, respondents spoke of how more reliable networks of smugglers organising journeys to Sudan and beyond collapsed in the immediate aftermath of conflict breaking out there as smugglers themselves fled the same threats of violence as their potential clients. Similarly, when the war broke out in Khartoum, Eritrean respondents detailed how they too could not easily access capital to pay smugglers because of telecommunications blackouts and the collapse of banking services.
Anti-smuggling operations in Libya from 2017 onwards, including the arrests of several prominent Eritrean traffickers, were said to have affected well-established Eritrean ‘brokers’ in the region who had to flee. Key informants noted that these traffickers were replaced by more predatory actors, leading to heightened insecurity and kidnappings of clients. With regard to increasingly popular ‘alternative routes’ out of Ethiopia and Sudan, such as those into South Sudan, Kenya and Egypt, informants and respondents spoke of having to use the services of ‘new’ smugglers. Their lack of experience and knowledge of how to operate in these highly volatile locations was said to have made the journeys riskier, longer and more fragmented.
Finding #4: The increasing availability of private resettlement opportunities to Canada was one of the most important factors behind Eritreans staying in the region.
It was clear throughout our interviews that many Eritreans had moved to cities across the region to access the administrative procedures needed to pursue a ‘process’ to a third country, which was most often Canada. In surveys with Eritreans across the Horn of Africa and East Africa between 2021 and 2023, 40% of Eritreans said that their preferred final destination was Canada.
For the most part, they were hoping to travel to Canada through the now-paused private ‘Group of 5’ resettlement scheme. The number of Eritreans supported to move through this route – 43,800 Eritreans were privately resettled to Canada between January 2015 and August 2024 – is ten times the number entering Canada through government-assisted resettlement programmes. This number also far exceeds the number of Eritreans resettled worldwide by UNHCR: the organisation supported the resettlement of 23,500 Eritreans between 2015 and 2024.
Many respondents thus shared that it was the hope engendered by legal opportunities for onward mobility that had made the option of staying in the region feel both more attractive and feasible – for the time being.
Key Recommendations
The experiences of camp- and settlement-based Eritreans across the region in recent years provide further evidence that encampment-based models of refugee protection need to be fundamentally reconsidered, and that cities can be a hub for new refugees and secondarily displaced Eritreans. Rather than resisting these movements, national governments and humanitarian organisations should try to organise basic assistance and support the potential of refugee populations to make urban economies grow.
At the least, individuals looking to claim asylum should be provided with opportunities to register their claims in towns and cities rather than face being moved to new camps as the solution to their vulnerability in urban areas. (This idea has been proposed in Ethiopia with suggestions to move Eritrean refugees from Addis Ababa to Afar for their protection.) There should be greater investment in emergency facilities to support displaced populations in registering their asylum claims, as well as in long-term upgrades to the existing registration systems so that administrative gaps and bottlenecks do not delay an individual’s access to key documentation or drive further unsafe movement.
The two new reports for the Mixed Migration Centre highlight how Eritreans are becoming the target of arbitrary detentions and deportations in Cairo and Addis Ababa. This is a worrying trend that requires international attention and further pressure to immediately stop these practices. Conditions in Eritrea have not changed, and deportations may lead to severe harm.
Collaboration with grassroots, refugee-based organisations that have sprung up across the region to fill the void of protection faced by displaced Eritreans may enable better monitoring of the challenges faced by this population. In general, better coordination and partnership with grassroots initiatives may lead to alternative ways to assist and support urban refugee populations, including by strengthening refugees’ trust in governmental and larger humanitarian actors.
Governments in Europe and North America must then recognise that investments in externalising and policing borders in the absence of safe and legal routes for migration simply create a further market for abusive smuggling and trafficking operations. These operations force displaced people to undertake more dangerous and expensive journeys across borders. The private resettlement scheme offered in Canada provided a commendable model that proved the desire and commitment of Canadian citizens and residents to sponsor the safe arrival of refugees, but there are a range of other legal pathways for mobility that governments in Europe should consider expanding upon or simplifying, including family reunification and study visas.
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