[ Human Trafficking, Country-by-Country ]

ETHIOPIA (Tier 2) – Extracted in part from the U.S. State Dept 2023 TIP Report

The Government of Ethiopia does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Ethiopia was upgraded to Tier 2. These efforts included investigating officials allegedly complicit in potential trafficking crimes; updating the government’s SOPs for victim identification; finalizing a robust NRM, including a service provider directory to refer identified victims to protection services; and increasing efforts to provide protection services to and prevent trafficking among Ethiopian migrants returning from work in Gulf states. The government increased its use of the 2020 anti-trafficking proclamation and reported sentencing data for the first time in several years, which reflected adequate penalties for convicted traffickers involving significant prison terms. The government took steps to increase pre-departure and job skills trainings for Ethiopians utilizing formal recruitment processes to seek work abroad. The government launched its first trafficking-specific hotline and regularly sought input from survivors in developing new anti-trafficking activities. However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. The government continued to disproportionately focus on transnational trafficking crimes and did not take adequate action to address internal trafficking crimes, including domestic servitude and child sex trafficking, despite the scale of the problem. Protection services for victims remained limited and inconsistent in quality, particularly outside of Addis Ababa; additionally, the government continued to rely on civil society organizations to provide most victim services, but it did not provide sufficient in-kind or financial support to these efforts. Despite reports of fraudulent labor recruiters regularly recruiting and exploiting Ethiopians seeking employment abroad, the government did not report efforts to hold fraudulent labor recruiters criminally accountable.

Prioritized Recommendations

Expand anti-trafficking training to all levels of government, including regional officials outside of Addis Ababa, on implementation of the SOPs for victim identification and the NRM to refer all victims to appropriate care.

Continue to increase efforts to investigate and prosecute alleged traffickers, including for both transnational and internal trafficking crimes, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms.

Raise awareness, including at the community level, of formal recruitment processes for migrant work abroad.

Systematically and proactively identify trafficking victims by screening for trafficking indicators among vulnerable populations, including individuals in commercial sex, Ethiopian migrant workers returning from overseas, unaccompanied children, and foreign nationals such as Eritreans, Somalis, South Sudanese, and Cuban medical workers, and refer all trafficking victims to appropriate services.

Collaborate with NGOs and international organizations to increase the government’s capacity to provide short-term shelter, long-term housing, and protective services to all trafficking victims, including adult males and foreign nationals.

Consistently enforce strong regulations and oversight of labor recruitment agencies, including by eliminating recruitment fees charged to migrant workers, holding fraudulent labor recruiters criminally accountable, and training labor inspectors to report potential violations to the appropriate officials.

Increase protections for Ethiopian trafficking victims exploited abroad, including by providing pre-departure training to all migrant workers, training Ethiopian embassy staff to identify and assist victims abroad, establishing and implementing additional bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) with destination countries, and assigning labor attachés to Ethiopian embassies to monitor migrants’ working conditions abroad.

Continue to increase training for police, prosecutors, judges, immigration officials, and service providers to improve understanding of the differences between human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

Develop and implement a comprehensive and centralized database to accurately report the government’s anti-trafficking statistics and disaggregate data on trafficking crimes and migrant smuggling.