The Mixed Migration Centre’s 4Mi project gathers hundreds of interviews with refugees and migrants on the move every month and has developed extensive data sets across several migratory routes. This data indicates that kidnapping and extortionate detention have become a normalised part of the criminal exploitation of refugees and migrants on the move.

This Briefing Paper draws on published research and 4Mi primary data to deliver, in the first section, some general and global observations and case studies. The second part of the paper offers a deeper exploration of experiences from the Horn of Africa, using interviews with and surveys of refugees and migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to illustrate the role of kidnapping and extortionate detention in mixed migration flows along three routes out of the region.