Assistance to Stranded Ethiopian Migrants

Somalia - IOM continues to conduct in-depth interviews in the Somali town of Bossasso in Puntland to help stranded undocumented Ethiopian migrants wanting to return home and to identify those who are at risk of being trafficked to the Middle East and Europe for the purpose of labour exploitation.

The migrants are part of a larger group of an estimated 4,000 Ethiopians who are currently transiting through Puntland on their way to the Middle East by using well established smuggling and trafficking networks to cross the Gulf of Aden towards Yemen and then onwards to Saudi Arabia.

IOM is currently working with the Ethiopian and Puntland authorities to organise the safe and orderly return of 238 Ethiopian migrants who wish to return home. It is expected that a team of Ethiopian Immigration officers will arrive in Bossasso on Sunday to verify the migrants' nationality. Two charter flights are planned to fly the stranded migrants to Dire Dawa on Tuesday 21 November.

"IOM is providing pre-departure counselling and medical screening to the migrants who wish to return home," says IOM's Bill Lorenz, who is organizing the assisted voluntary return of Ethiopian migrants from Bossasso. "Assistance will also be provided by IOM and partners NGOs upon their arrival in Ethiopia, as well as information on the dangers of irregular migration."

This return operation is being carried out in coordination with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia and with assistance from the UN's OCHA and UNHCR and with funding from the Danish Refugee Council.

In order to develop effective responses to emerging trends in irregular migration in the region and particularly human trafficking, IOM is actively gathering relevant information from the stranded migrants.

Initial findings show that almost all of the migrants were smuggled overland into Somalia and were heading to Saudi Arabia via Yemen in search of low skill jobs. Very few were aware of the risks involved in their dangerous journey which, as reported by the migrants, include being repeatedly robbed, long walks in the scorching desert, thirst, starvation and various forms of assault by shiftas, or local bandits.

"An overwhelming majority of the migrants were robbed of all their belongings by shiftas, who stripped searched them, beat them up, and in some cases, threatened to set fire to the small holds in which the migrants had been locked up in," says an IOM regional trafficking expert, Yitna Getachew, currently in Bossasso.

From interviews carried out so far, IOM has identified some individuals, particularly women and minors, who are vulnerable to human trafficking.

For more information, please contact:

Bill Lorenz
IOM Bossasso
Tel +252 570 25 16
E-mail: wlorenz@iom.int