Over the past year, numerous reports have surfaced about the detention and separation of children in Ethiopia who are fleeing conflicts in nearby countries, particularly Sudan and Eritrea. In a submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Global Detention Project summarises these concerns and makes a series of recommendations aimed […]
UN Experts Call on Ethiopia to Halt Mass Deportations and Detentions of Eritreans
Ethiopian authorities must halt the mass deportation of Eritrean refugees, UN experts say. The country, which has hosted thousands of Eritreans for years, has also been accused of arbitrarily detaining large numbers of Eritreans, often on the ground that they lack documentation–despite the fact that the country’s Refugee and Returnee Service (RSS) stopped registering newly […]
Ethiopia: Covid-19 and Detention
In 2020, the GDP highlighted several reports documenting the dire detention conditions and appalling ill-treatment that thousands of Ethiopian migrants had faced in Saudi Arabia (see, for example, 6 October 2020 Saudi Arabia update). Following international pressure–including from the European Parliament, as well as groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) who urged Saudi Arabia […]
Ethiopia: Covid-19 and Detention
Following Human Rights Watch’s report highlighting the dire conditions that Ethiopian migrants have been held in in Saudi Arabia during the pandemic (see our 21 August update on Saudi Arabia on this platform), the Telegraph has revealed that the Ethiopian government has attempted to silence those stuck inside Saudi detention facilities. A leaked document submitted […]
Ethiopia: Covid-19 and Detention
Ethiopia has a history of sheltering refugees and has long maintained an open-door asylum policy. The country hosts an estimated 769,000 refugees and other “people of concern.” Unlike in many other countries in the region, refugees have the right to access health care services in Ethiopia. However, after the onset of the Covid crisis, there […]
Last updated: August 2016
Ethiopia Immigration Detention Profile
Ethiopia is an important refugee host country as well as a transit country for people seeking to make their way to the Gulf States or Europe, particularly from South Central Somalia and Somaliland.[1]
Little is known about the migrant detention practices of Ethiopia. However, there have been occasional reports of authorities arresting and deporting migrants as they pass through the country. Foreigners appear to be detained in the country’s prisons prior to deportation.
The government reportedly allows the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit prisons and consular officials and NGO representatives have met with prisoners. However, conditions in Ethiopian prisons are generally poor. Issues include children being incarcerated alongside adults, extreme overcrowding, limited access to potable water, and unreliable medical care.
In addition to being a transit country for migrants, Ethiopia hosts the largest population of refugees in Africa. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that, as of December 2014, the country was hosting 644,168 refugees. The majority of these refugees are from South Sudan and Somalia. Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, along with the UNHCR, has supported these refugees by providing camps with access to healthcare, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene.
[1] This summary relies primarily on information provided in the U.S. State Department’s 2014 human rights report on Ethiopia, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/236570.pdf; and the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat’s 2015 report, Behind Bars: The Detention of Migrants in and from the East & Horn of Africa, http://www.regionalmms.org.
DETENTION STATISTICS
DETAINEE DATA
DETENTION CAPACITY
ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION
ADDITIONAL ENFORCEMENT DATA
PRISON DATA
POPULATION DATA
SOCIO-ECONOMIC DATA & POLLS
LEGAL & REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
Does the Country Have Specific Laws that Provide for Migration-Related Detention?
GROUNDS FOR DETENTION
Immigration-Status-Related Grounds
Grounds for Criminal Immigration-Related Incarceration / Maximum Length of Incarceration
LENGTH OF DETENTION
DETENTION INSTITUTIONS
PROCEDURAL STANDARDS & SAFEGUARDS
COSTS & OUTSOURCING
COVID-19 DATA
TRANSPARENCY
Global Detention Project/Partner Access to Information Requests/Results
MONITORING
NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORING BODIES
NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISMS (OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE)
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS (NGOS)
GOVERNMENTAL MONITORING BODIES
INTERNATIONAL DETENTION MONITORING
INTERNATIONAL TREATIES & TREATY BODIES
International Treaties Ratified
Ratio of relevant international treaties ratified
Relevant Recommendations or Observations Issued by Treaty Bodies
45............(c) Ensure that migrant children are not detained on the basis of their or their
parents’ migration status and that alternatives to detention are available through the
timely provision of safe and dignified accommodation while keeping the family unity;
(a) Ensure the safety and security of the refugees and asylum-seekers affected
by the armed conflict, particularly those who are displaced, to effectively prevent and
address violations of their human rights by any party to the conflict, and to provide
them with adequate access to essential services;
(b) Effectively investigate and prosecute cases of violence, including sexual
and gender-based violence against refugee women and girls, trafficking, disappearance
and refoulement, particularly of Eritrean nationals, and bring the perpetrators to
justice;
(c) Ensure that, in practice, no one may be expelled, returned or extradited
to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would
be in danger of being subjected to torture;
(d) Guarantee that all asylum-seekers have access to refugee status
determination procedures and to the swift and fair determination of refugee status;
(e) Ensure that procedural safeguards against refoulement are in place and
that effective remedies with respect to refoulement claims in removal proceedings are
available, including reviews of rejections by an independent judicial body, in particular
on appeal;
(f) Ensure the establishment of effective mechanisms to promptly identify
victims of torture, trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence among asylum-
seekers.
33...The Committee is concerned at reports of targeted violence against Eritrean refugees by parties to the armed conflict, resulting in their deaths, displacement, disappearances, and refoulement...
(b) The measures necessary to facilitate access to asylum procedures and
strictly uphold the principle of non-refoulement in both law and practice, particularly
as regards those arriving from Eritrea and unaccompanied children;
(a) Collect disaggregated data on refugee, asylum seeking and internally displaced children, including unaccompanied and separated children;
(b) Enhance the security in refugee camps and ensure the protection of all refugee children, particularly girls, against all forms of violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and trafficking, and establish appropriate mechanisms to report and investigate such cases, and to effectively prosecute the perpetrators;
(c) Urgently investigate reports of disappearances of children from the refugee camps, establish their whereabouts and prosecute those responsible for such crimes;
(d) Adopt targeted policies to promote the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons through the development of out-of-camp policies and to elaborate and implement a comprehensive strategy for the protection of internally displaced persons;
(e) Withdraw its reservation to the 1951 Refugee Convention regarding primary education and ratify the 1954 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness;
(f) Urgently improve the conditions in refugee camps, particularly by providing adequate and quality nutrition, education and health services, including mental and reproductive health services;
(g) Ensure that children of refugees are registered at birth;
(h) Continue to engage with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in this regard."
Global Detention Project and Partner Submissions to Treaty Bodies
> UN Special Procedures
> UN Universal Periodic Review
Relevant Recommendations or Observations from the UN Universal Periodic Review
76. On 7 July 2023, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, the
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants brought to the
attention of Ethiopia information that they had received on the alleged arbitrary detention
and collective expulsion of hundreds of Eritreans, including registered and unregistered
asylum-seekers, in violation of the non-refoulement principle, exposing them to the risk of
being subjected to serious human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearance
and arbitrary detention. They stated that, under international law, all persons facing
deportation or repatriation should have access to a fair, individualized examination of their
circumstances and access to legal representation and to an independent review mechanism
with the authority to appeal negative decisions.
77. The Committee against Torture stated that Ethiopia should. (b) ensure that no one could be expelled, returned or extradited to another State where there were substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture; (d) ensure that procedural safeguards against refoulement were in place and that effective remedies with respect to refoulement claims in removal proceedings were available;
HEALTH CARE PROVISION
HEALTH IMPACTS
COVID-19
Country Updates
Government Agencies
Ethiopian Press Agency: https://www.gcs.gov.et/en/
International Organisations
UNHCR Ethiopia Country Website: http://www.unhcr.org/afr/ethiopia
IOM Office in Addis Ababa: https://ethiopia.iom.int/
NGO & Research Institutions
