IOM, UNICEF strengthen partnership to respond to needs of migrant children

Children as young as 10 are among Ethiopians leaving for better prospects outside the country, many with their parents’ consent.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country after Nigeria, accounts for the bulk of child migrants in the Horn of Africa. Poverty, conflict and broken families are some of the factors that drive children to leave Ethiopia, with Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Europe being among the target destinations.

However, many of these children find themselves in perilous situations outside of their established environments. They are highly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation and very often find themselves stranded and in need of assistance.

A strengthened collaboration between the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Ethiopia and UNICEF is aiming to support such children. It seeks to build on the framework for the two agencies’ collaboration across the world, established through a 1996 cooperation agreement and a subsequent memorandum of understanding in 2006.

It is envisaged that by working closely together in Ethiopia, IOM and UNICEF have a chance to make a difference in addressing the worrying trend of children on the move, as the numbers remain significant.

For example, from January to July 2019, IOM’s drop-in facilities for stranded migrants in the Horn of Africa – also known as Migrant Response Centres – registered 1,224 minors, amounting to 18 percent of all registrations.

According to IOM, between May 2017 and July 2019, some 21,657 Ethiopian minors returned to Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia – mostly involuntarily – which is around 8 percent of the total number of returnees from Saudi Arabia to the Horn of Africa. In May and June 2019, IOM led an emergency humanitarian operation that helped close to 3,000 Ethiopian migrants detained in Yemen, including 1,236 unaccompanied children, to safely return home.

IOM and UNICEF plan to investigate and analyse the underlying causes of the movement of children and provide support to programmes led by the Government of Ethiopia to prevent family separation. In addition, they will strengthen cross-border information management pertaining to children and conduct joint information campaigns and fundraising interventions.

The two agencies will also work towards aiding the Government of Ethiopia to respond to the immediate needs of returned unaccompanied minors, such as shelter, psychosocial support, family tracing and reunification, and reintegration into their communities of origin.

The new IOM-UNICEF agreement seeks “to build on the comparative advantage of each organization and to establish operational modalities of cooperation in order to benefit children and women in Ethiopia.” The partnership complements the work of the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of Africa which recently established a collaboration with Save the Children in Ethiopia.

To date, IOM has provided voluntary return and reintegration assistance to 5,000 Ethiopian migrants under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative, of whom 20 percent are children.

Original source: IOM
Published on 24 September 2019