EU-IOM Joint Initiative

for Migrant Protection and Reintegration

Mathios recalls the day he was told that he would be returning to Ethiopia. “I was too excited to eat or drink. My family had given up and thought I had died,” he explained.

Now 47-years-old, Mathios had spent two years in detention in Tanzania before being voluntarily returned to Ethiopia with support from the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of Africa.

Back in Ethiopia, Mathios stayed at the IOM-run transit centre in Addis Ababa, where he also received psychosocial counseling, orientation training and assistance with transportation to his community of origin in the Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s Regional State (SNNPR).

The EU-IOM Joint Initiative recently provided him with the materials he needed to open a small barber shop in his hometown in Halaba zone. “I have been in this business before. I think I can do well; I can send my children to school and lead a better life,” he said.

Mathios is among 1,065 returnees assisted to establish micro-businesses in December 2020 with materials provided by the EU-IOM Joint Initiative. The materials ranged from equipment to run a tyre business, to retail shops and flour mills. Returnees were also supported to enter the grain trade as well as to engage in bee-keeping, cattle fattening and poultry farming.

Overall, the equipment provided was worth over USD1,2 million, and was distributed to returnees in Amhara, Oromia and SNNPR as well as Dire Dawa city administration and Addis Ababa.

“The EU-IOM Joint Initiative offers a need-based and integrated reintegration assistance to vulnerable returnees, including social, psychosocial and economic support, which are all vital for ensuring sustainable reintegration,” says Sara Basha, coordinator of the programme in Ethiopia. “The programme calls for ownership from the local government and commitment from the returnees themselves.”

In the lead-up to the hand-over of the materials, a series of personalized consultations were with the returnees. These were run in collaboration with regional Enterprise and Industry Development Bureaus, along with the Labour and Social Affairs Bureaus. The meetings facilitated the identification of returnees’ preferred businesses and to finalize plans for any technical training needed.

Like Mathios, returnees reintegrated in December 2020 returned from Tanzania, a transit country on the overland route to South Africa, known as the Southern Route. They were arrested separately and gone one to spend months or even years detained in unfavorable conditions.

South Africa has particular appeal in SNNP region, being the preferred destination for many young men migrating from there. This is due to the strong footprint of many Ethiopians from the region who have used the route to South Africa over the last few years.

Out of the 2,995 returnees in SNNPR assisted by the programme to date, 2,600 returned from transit countries along the Southern Route, including Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and Malawi. Many survived hunger, abuse by smugglers and detention. In March 2020, 14 out of 78 Ethiopian migrants were lucky to have been alive when the authorities in Mozambique opened an air-less containerized vehicle headed for South Africa.

In January 2021, Tanzanian President John Magufuli announced that 1,789 Ethiopian irregular migrants in detention would be released. This was meant as a goodwill gesture to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries following talks with his Ethiopian counterpart, President Sahle-Work Zewde, who was in Tanzania on an official visit.

About the EU-IOM Joint Initiative

Launched in December 2016, with funding from the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, the EU-IOM Joint Initiative brings together 26 African countries of the Sahel and Lake Chad region, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa, the EU and IOM around the goal of ensuring migration is safer, more informed and better governed for both migrants and their communities.

For more information please contact Helina Mengistu at IOM Ethiopia, email: hmengistu@iom.int; or the IOM Regional Office in Nairobi: Julia Hartlieb, email: jhartlieb@iom.int and Wilson Johwa, email: wjohwa@iom.int