 Faced with the lack of options for safe and legal mobility, thousands of Ethiopians leave the country every year using irregular channels to reach Northern Africa, Europe, the Gulf States, and Southern Africa by crossing land and sea. Because they are trying to avoid detection and are often in the hands of smugglers, these journeys can be really risky, with the absolute worst evidence being the thousands of Ethiopian migrants who are believed to have died or have gone missing along the way, whether due to violence, vehicle accidents, shipwrecks, or a lack of access to medicines, sheltering food. People are aware about the risks. Families are aware. Sometimes migrants never tell families they are migrating. There are young groups from a village that just team up and they just leave the village. They are aware of the risks, but they hope that they can make it. So staying risky for the young people because of economic, political, and social reasons, going is also risky. But at least there is hope to get something. At least 50% of the migrants make it and they come back as diasporas. So they send families, you know, remittances. So people are aware of the risks, but without the choice of either legal migration channels or to stay in the home while there are a lot of attractive situations from the receiving side. So there is a success story there. So there is high probability of young people taking risks. The majority of the regular migrants are male. They are in the early 20s. And most of them come from the ruler and semi-arban sightingers and they have low education status. But when families don't hear from their loved ones, they are left to desperately search for information about whether they are okay and to find out what happened to them. In this episode, we talked to Mengistu Tedese, national program officer at IOM's country office in Ethiopia, about the context of how and why Ethiopians migrate from the country and how the government is now considering addressing the topic of missing migrants. I am working in IOM Ethiopia Migration Management Unit as a national capacity building officer. And my main area of engagement is to lies with the government of Ethiopia coordination mechanism, which we call it the National Partnership Collision on Migration. This collision is responsible to oversee the overall migration issues in the country. And we are working with them at national and regional levels. Then we speak with Dr. Tekaline Mangiste, chairperson of the Department of Anthropology at Addis Ababa University and affiliated researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Dr. Mangiste was the lead researcher in Ethiopia on IOM's recent study with families of missing migrants. He interviewed families who have missing relatives to learn what they are doing to search for them and the barriers they face in doing so. He spoke with people who work for the government and other organizations to map the current policy and legal avenues that families with missing migrant relatives in Ethiopia have. My name is Tekaline Ayaleo. I get into this topic because for the last 11 years I have been researching and publishing on migration issues generally and also human smuggling and human trafficking. We have interviewed 21 people between the ages of 25 and 66 were interviewed. We have also, from this, there is a participatory where men, their fathers, brothers of missing migrants and nine were women, mothers and sisters. We have also conducted 10 interviews at Addis Ababa and 11 in rural areas. So we have conducted research in both urban and rural areas. And also we have conducted, they all had fathers, mothers or brothers, husbands who were missing. Contacting them, negotiating with them, discussing with them. So gradually I built rapport and relations with the families. Then gradually I found out some families were willing to really share their experiences. So I followed all these anthropological, demographic approaches which are useful to access these kind of research participants which are vulnerable. And what are the motivations of these mostly young men and women who left their families and take risky migration routes to other countries? There are different factors mentioned as the drivers of migration in Ethiopia. I think I can categorize as some structural, individual and criminal aspects. So the structural factors include poverty, unemployment, especially visible in urban centers, villages, and there is also under-employment. There is a limited opportunity for regular pathways. There is a huge demand in Ethiopia, but availability for overseas employment is very few. Ethiopia currently has bilateral labor agreement with four destination countries. And because of COVID, I think the movement is not facilitated. So there is a limited or low regular options for those who opt for regular migration. 86% of regular migrants are females. So the regular migration channels are mainly open for female domestic workers. So there is few or no regular pathways for male migrants. So the males usually opt for regular channels. We know that conflict is another driver. Since November 2020, there has been an ongoing civil war in the region of Tigray that has displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes. I'm really worried about my daughter. I can't stop thinking about her and I don't know what I'm going to do. My hopes and dreams left with her. Sometimes I talk to myself just like a mad woman. I have long waited to see her face, but my wishes remain a daydream. Every day I pray hoping to get her back alive. Whenever someone knocks at the door, I run hoping that she'll be my daughter who has come back. I know she's not dead because I see her in my dreams. My heart always tells me she's alive. This is the testimony of an Ethiopian mother. For her privacy, we're using the voice of an actor and keeping her name anonymous. So how many people in Ethiopia are waiting to hear from their loved ones who left on migration journeys? There is no institution which is keeping record of how many families are missing their loved ones. So we don't have a system. On the other hand, most of migrants who are missing are irregular migrants who are using non-legal channels. It's very difficult to have comprehensive statistics on this. But generally, from the stories, from my exposure, from my experience, I can understand that many families, at least, for example, one among four or five migrants who live in their home areas, normally they do not make their journey to all the way. Or they miss along the way, or they die. So thousands, actually, of families, migrants, you know, get lost or miss along the migration, along the series. You can't, I live with the stories. I never forget it. Many families have, you know, suffered, economical, psychosocial, and also searching challenges. So there are a lot of stories that I put in the report. For example, I can mention one which is still going on with me. I can't work in a farm because I see the face of my boy again and again. I can't even fulfill the basic needs of my family. I don't sleep at night. His voice and image come to my mind every minute. His mother had a heart attack after she heard of his disappearance. Often left without concrete answers about what happened to their loved ones. Families face socioeconomic hardships and struggle with administrative and legal obstacles. There are a lot of psychological, financial and legal challenges families of missing migrants or those families having a missing loved ones experience. For example, through the interviews, we learned not only about the grief, but also the social, legal and economic hardships, you know, and the impact that having a missing family member has had over people, you know. So most families interviewed indicated that they had been unable to establish whether the missing loved ones were dead or alive, leading them to, you know, experience of ambiguous loss, which occurs when there is no clear closure or sufficient reason behind what happened. So this is really, really painful. On the other hand, families also indicated that they experienced a vast range of physical, psychological and behavioral issues ranging from anxiety, depression, hopelessness, stress, sadness and the loneliness. It was also apparent how within the same family, women and men are impacted by having a missing migrant relative in different ways. The challenges are so complex and diverse for women. For example, interviews indicated that the decision of when to start or stop searching for information about the missing relative often tends to be made by male relatives, fathers or older sons. So women, the widows or daughters of missing migrants, reported often having two challenges, you know, the decision is made by their fathers or brothers in law concerning the search. The control of any property or their ability to remarry or factors impacting the short and the long-term financial stability of women. I can't talk about property or inherit the land before I get proof of the death of my husband. According to the tradition, his brothers control the land. I can't go to the courts and get into a fight with his relatives. If they farm the land and give some food to my children, that is fine. I can't go against tradition and quarrel over inheritance. Land disputes are a serious problem in this village. People kill each other over land conflicts. I live with his relatives. I depend on them. Everything is difficult for me. Women were disproportionately affected financially by missing migrants because most missing Ethiopian migrants are men. Migrants often acquire significant debt in order to cover the cost of their journeys. And even in the event of someone's death or disappearance, debt is not cancelled and many times the responsibility to cover financial obligations falls on the migrants. So migrants' wives. Given the fact that women are often prevented from assuming control over property or other inherited goods, the debt imposes long-term obligations that limit women's ability to care for themselves, their children, possibly other relatives. So it's like a double challenge for women. They lose bread owners, loved ones, and then the cultural exclusions or other gender inequalities also aggravate the impact and the vulnerability of women more than men. So how do families cope with this situation? For example, to find out information about their missing sons, daughters, and other family members, the people who interviewed mostly developed their own networks and support structures to search actually. For example, in both rural and urban settings where we spoke to families of missing migrants, families were not silent or passive victims. Of course, they tried different strategies within their means to find information. For example, in urban areas in Addis Ababa, we noticed that there was more no reliance on the news of social media. So some would watch the news looking for any information related to where they thought their missing family members was or about their route or, for example, about no shipwrecks or in Mediterranean or any accident in Italy. So they are very active, urban families are very active on the media and on the social media. People in the city were also more active on social media groups, so posting and searching for information. For example, the social media groups were often for the Ethiopian diaspora. So they could spread out the news. So this is for the urban families. Those in Addis Ababa also responded, reported that they tried to approach authorities more about their cases, although this didn't usually go very well. Even though they are active, urban families are active and approach the state, this never, not always work well. For example, the families who had approached authorities about their missing relatives generally reported quite negative experiences, in fact. They were often blamed for, you know, families were blamed for letting their relatives migrate with the help of smugglers, which in some cases, you know, retromatized families. In other words, if you're a person in Ethiopia looking for information about a relative who left on a migration journey and who is missing, you are left on your own to search through informal sources. Particularly on the well-established southern route from Ethiopia to South Africa, families often contact smugglers to seek information. We don't know which institution is responsible to offer information related to missing migrants. I don't know where to go or whom to ask in the government. Secondly, it is impossible to go to the country where my son went missing because I can't afford that. What I can do is to get news from the smuggler who facilitated his journey. Though I am very disappointed in the smugglers, I have never thought to accuse them also because most of them are my relatives. Also, I am scared to go to the government office because I have heard of families who sent their children through illegal ways and who were arrested and thrown into jail. More rural settings where we also interviewed families searching for information was more word of mouth. Families reported relying mainly on information shared by people who had travelled with their missing loved ones, other migrants or guides or smugglers, or even border guards. They used these strategies, the rural families. So, despite the stigma that surrounds their activities, smugglers, locally known as Darlala or Darlaloch, were often recognized for their willingness and ability to access contacts and information that could establish or inform the whereabouts of missing persons for the rural families in Hadya. So, interviews indicated how smugglers often had information concerning the vehicular accident and as they could contact border guards for information concerning any migrants being detained or imprisoned while transitioning countries such as in Tanzania, in Malawi, in Mozambique. While the relationship between families and smugglers, of course, must not be romanticized, but interviews revealed that many families were more likely to trust smugglers over authorities when it comes to solutions or information about their missing or loved ones. So far, there has been little government attention and action on the issues faced by families of missing migrants in Ethiopia. However, this could be changing. In September last year, IOM's recent research on families was presented to the members of the National Partnership Coalition of Migration, an interagency government body in Ethiopia. It's not taken as a priority for the national government, but after the research and after the presentation of the research to members of the National Partnership Coalition on Migration, the things are improving and one of the key steps was integrating the missing migrants component or element into the CSA, Central Statistics Authority, Labor and Migration Survey. So now things are improving, so that still needs advocacy. While the government is starting to take notice of this issue, there's still much to be done. It is first important to acknowledge the challenges faced by families with missing migrant relatives and to recognize the impacts on the country and the community of these missing migrant cases. What did the families who participated in this research say? What did they recommend would help? One, it is important, the most important thing is to say that any agreement, any engagement with the family members of missing migrants will require specific approaches based on their different needs, which are connected to a wide range of intersecting factors such as gender, age, disability, social community status, ethnicity and others. The second is the main recommendation is that any agency or institution should be designated with a mandate to coordinate and facilitate cooperation between the various governments, institutions and civil society actors at the regional, national and local levels involved in the process of searching for or identifying and repatriating missing and deceased migrants. So institutions should act as a single point of contact for families searching for their missing migrants. Families should be able to also report the disappearance of their relatives through simple and accessible procedures which they trust to be safe and confidential regardless of the legality or irregularity of their journeys which they went missing. Another issue families were mentioning was this institution or government institution which is responsible for supporting families should actively and effectively involve and collaborate with community-based and grassroots societies and groups that support families of missing migrants. Authorities in Ethiopia should start approaching the issue of missing migrants from a humanitarian perspective. As having a missing loved one, no matter the contact is a humanitarian tragedy. So the authorities should stop blaming the families. For most it should be a humanitarian concern for the families. Living without them, stories of families left behind is a podcast series produced by IOM's Data Analysis Center in Berlin. Thank you for listening.