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 at preventing harm to migrant and refugee children in the country.
In mid-2023, a group of UN human rights experts issued an urgent appeal condemning Ethiopia’s arbitrary detentions and mass expulsions of hundreds of Eritrean refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants escaping conflicts. “Several cases of family separation have been reported following the mass deportations, with parents forced back to Eritrea and children left behind in Ethiopia,” said the appeal. The experts added that “the authorities are specifically targeting Eritreans, a practice that constitutes discrimination.”
There has also been a surge in Sudanese refugees fleeing the civil war in their country, which erupted in 2023, many of whom have faced arrest and detention in Ethiopia. According to UNHCR, Ethiopia has received some 47,000 refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan since the start of the conflict, which quickly rose to nearly 120,000 in the first quarter of 2024.
According to reports, in May 2024, at least 1,000 Sudanese refugees fled a UN camp in northern Ethiopia following shootings and armed robberies by local militias, many of whom were later arrested by the police. “We have been abducted, killed, and attacked repeatedly since we arrived here in June. We have decided to go back to Sudan, despite the war,” one of the refugees told Reuters. Al Jazeera reported that some 3,000 Sudanese who survived such attacks were hiding in the forest near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan. Many have asked to be evacuated from the country, saying that they “refuse to be put in any other camp here in Ethiopia.”
The recent reports of the abusive treatment of refugees in Ethiopia are just the latest in a series of critical reports from UN human rights bodies dating back nearly a decade. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and the Committee against Torture have all previously issued recommendations that remain relevant and urgent today, particularly concerning the treatment of refugee women, girls and children. Many of these recommendations remain unfulfilled and were reiterated in the GDP’s recent submission to the CRC.
Key recommendations
- Ethiopia should immediately cease arresting and detaining refugee and migrant children and their families for reasons related to their migration or asylum status. Instead, appropriate non-custodial accommodation must be found for them.
- Ethiopia must ensure that children are never separated from their families, that the family unit remains intact and be provided appropriate shelter and social services outside of any form of detention or incarceration.
- Ethiopia must provide detailed information about the locations of all detention centres, prisons, jails, informal camps, or other sites of deprivation of liberty where refugee or migrant children or their families are detained and ensure access to these facilities by independent monitoring bodies.
- Ethiopia must never forcibly deport refugee children or their families back to places where they will face persecution or other harm.
- Ethiopia must not subject refugee children or their families to any form of punishment or reprisal due to their irregular entrance into or stay on its territory.
- Ethiopia should implement the CRC, CEDAW and CAT recommendations made respectively in 2015, 2019 and 2023.
