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 in Sudan and Ethiopia, for years and even decades. They have built families and pursued business activities, and had no immediate intention, ability or opportunities to move on. Additionally, for several years, a relatively large number of Eritreans reached European countries, where most saw their applications for asylum granted.
In the last few years, however, the wars in Tigray and Sudan, and violent instability across Ethiopia, have led to widespread secondary displacement of Eritreans from and within countries in the region. Meanwhile, opportunities for Eritreans to reach or reside in other key destinations – including the European Union (EU), Israel and Saudi Arabia – have also markedly reduced 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 through once extremely popular routes.
MMC’s new report “Where to Next?” investigates the impacts of these shrinking spaces of refuge for Eritrean refugees. It asks: Where are Eritreans looking for refuge now? What are their experiences in new sites and countries of asylum? And how might governments and international organisations better support secondarily displaced Eritreans fleeing insecurity and conflicts?
The study is based on over fifty interviews conducted online with recently displaced Eritreans from Ethiopia and Sudan and key informants between June-November 2024. The journeys of the respondents were complex. Sometimes they involved several border crossings; at other times, they happened within one country. Some people who fled the war in Tigray had to return to Eritrea, before leaving again through Sudan to finally end up back in Addis Ababa. Others escaped from Khartoum when the war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 to camps in the Kassala region in the East of Sudan, only to realise that the situation was too unsafe for them to stay and so they have moved on to safer cities in the region.
Generally speaking, secondarily displaced Eritreans appear to be relocating from across Ethiopia, Sudan, Israel and Saudi Arabia towards key cities including Kampala in Uganda, Cairo in Egypt, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Juba in South Sudan. Here we highlight some key findings arising from their experiences.
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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 in Sudan and Ethiopia, for years and even decades. They have built families and pursued business activities, and had no immediate intention, ability or opportunities to move on. Additionally, for several years, a relatively large number of Eritreans reached European countries, where most saw their applications for asylum granted.
In the last few years, however, the wars in Tigray and Sudan, and violent instability across Ethiopia, have led to widespread secondary displacement of Eritreans from and within countries in the region. Meanwhile, opportunities for Eritreans to reach or reside in other key destinations – including the European Union (EU), Israel and Saudi Arabia – have also markedly reduced 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 through once extremely popular routes.
MMC’s new report “Where to Next?” investigates the impacts of these shrinking spaces of refuge for Eritrean refugees. It asks: Where are Eritreans looking for refuge now? What are their experiences in new sites and countries of asylum? And how might governments and international organisations better support secondarily displaced Eritreans fleeing insecurity and conflicts?
The study is based on over fifty interviews conducted online with recently displaced Eritreans from Ethiopia and Sudan and key informants between June-November 2024. The journeys of the respondents were complex. Sometimes they involved several border crossings; at other times, they happened within one country. Some people who fled the war in Tigray had to return to Eritrea, before leaving again through Sudan to finally end up back in Addis Ababa. Others escaped from Khartoum when the war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 to camps in the Kassala region in the East of Sudan, only to realise that the situation was too unsafe for them to stay and so they have moved on to safer cities in the region.
Generally speaking, secondarily displaced Eritreans appear to be relocating from across Ethiopia, Sudan, Israel and Saudi Arabia towards key cities including Kampala in Uganda, Cairo in Egypt, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Juba in South Sudan. Here we highlight some key findings arising from their experiences.
Key findings
1. Protection assistance in camps is unable to keep pace with high needs throughout the region, 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 and hence vulnerability to detention and deportation. In particular, Eritreans living in Ethiopia and Egypt have in the last three months been targeted by arbitrary arrests and deportations.
2. Identity documents and the ability to regularise one’s status in countries of asylum are critical for people to consider remaining there, or to enable them to access opportunities for safe, legal onward mobility.
3. The outbreaks or worsening of violence across the Horn of Africa and North Africa, combined with stricter border policies, have further endangered Eritreans on the move by disrupting transport routes and established smuggling networks. In certain locations, this has led to more precarious journeys, more predatory smuggling business models and less reliable ‘service delivery’.
4. The availability of private resettlement opportunities, particularly to Canada, seemed to be one of the most important factors behind Eritreans staying in the region. The recent suspension of private sponsorship programmes to Canada and the USA is hence likely to cause shifts in Eritrean decision-making and mobility.
Recommendations
Based on these findings, the report highlights the following recommendations:
– Given the importance of cities as places of refuge for Eritreans, national governments and humanitarian organisations should support urban programming for new refugees and secondarily displaced Eritreans and should support the entrepreneurial potential of refugee populations to make urban economies grow.
– 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 (as has recently been proposed in Ethiopia with suggestions to move Eritrean refugees from Addis Ababa to Afar for their protection).
– Eritreans are the target of arbitrary detentions and deportations in Cairo and Addis Ababa. This is a worrying trend that requires international attention and advocacy to immediately stop these practices. Conditions in Eritrea have not changed, and deportation may lead to severe harm.
– Collaboration with grassroots, refugee-led organisations may enable better monitoring of the situation of Eritreans. In general, better coordination and collaboration with these initiatives may lead to alternative ways to assist and support urban refugee populations by building ongoing communication and better trust among actors.
– A lack of safe and legal pathways to move both regionally and to destinations further afield is pushing people to undertake more dangerous journeys and driving the market for abusive smuggling and trafficking operations. A more humane and rational approach would be to invest in both legal pathways and opportunities in the region that address the challenges outlined above. The private resettlement scheme offered in Canada provides a commendable model that harnesses the resources of citizens to support safe movement, but there are a range of other legal pathways for mobility that governments in Europe should consider expanding or simplifying, including family reunification and study visas.
