Some policy considerations regarding
the Ethiopian outmigration1
Seid Hassan (shassan@murraystate.edu)
and
Minga Negash (minga.negash@yahoo.com)
In our December 19, 2013
article entitled “Explaining the Ethiopian outmigration: incentives or
constrains” we alerted readers and policy makers in Ethiopia about the push,
pull and mediating factors of outmigration in general and outlined the factors
as they relate to Ethiopia. In this short article we aim to discuss further the
incompatibility between macroeconomic growth and outmigration and close the
piece by outlining potential mitigation strategies.
By the end of 2013 and
early 2014 the world witnessed yet another shame of Ethiopians. Voices of men,
women and children in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya, Southern Europe and Southern
Africa are instantly being transmitted across the globe through the use of
advanced information technology. Saudi Arabia alone deported at least 165,000
Ethiopians within the span of few weeks. Demonstrations were held in Kuwait and
Israel against African immigrants. The European Union has erected various forms
of fences against immigrants from Africa. As Emnet
Assefa of Addis
Standard, a journalist in one of the local newspaper noted, “[o]ver
the last few years, news of young Ethiopian men and women found dead inside jam‐packed containers loaded on heavy
duty trucks has become a routine media exercise both locally and in many parts
of the continent.” Abuses, abductions, disappearances and killings of
Ethiopians in the Middle East, North Africa, and Gulf
States has become common. On Thursday March 20, 2014 the (U.S. based)
National Public Radio (NPR) run a heart‐wrenching story of an Ethiopian young woman who took
unbelievable levels of risks and investments to reach the shores of the United
States. While outmigration is the history of mankind, as indicated in the holy
books, for example, modern day migration, particularly migration into the
Middle East, is documented to be associated with calamities.
Detentions of Ethiopians
for violating the immigration laws of other countries (such as in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe),
deportations, refugee camps filled with Ethiopians,
and sending the remains of Ethiopians who died in their search for better lives
and liberty has become routine. Disturbed by the depressing news and the total
failure of the Government of Ethiopia (GOE), the Ethiopian diaspora held noisy
protest demonstrations in front of the Saudi Arabian and Ethiopian embassies,
collected petitions, contributed and donated some
funds to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to aid
returnees and painfully listened to the information provided by foreign based
radios and websites. While these are normal reactions and laudable works, they
are nonetheless temporary measures and will not serve as mitigation strategies
unless one understands the causes, scale and depth of the problem, and consider
a range of possible policy options.
1 This article was
compiled from the speeches that were made at the 3rd Annual International
Conference of Ethiopian Women in the Diaspora which was held in Washington DC
on March 22, 2014. We thank the leadership team of the Center for the Rights of
Ethiopian Women for giving us the opportunity to share our thoughts with the
participants of the conference.
The Horn of Africa has
been and continues to be one of the hot spots of major human movements in the
world. Civil wars, secessionist conflicts, tribal‐clan warfare, famine, land scarcity and evictions,
and poverty have been the causes of both internal displacements and cross
border migration. At the time of writing this article, tens of thousands of
Sudanese refugees are reportedly crossing the border and entering the Ethiopian
territory in search of security. The civil wars in North and South Sudan,
tensions and skirmishes in the Eritrean‐Ethiopian borders, sectarian and secessionist
movements in Somalia and the Ogaden, ethnic, religious and clan tensions, land
grabs and repression have been some of the culprits of the migration.
In addition to the
instability and government failures in the region, it is important to note that
globalization often manifests itself in the form of increased movement of
capital, freer movement of goods and services, internationalization of
production and investments, and information about labor demand. Hence, outmigration
must also be examined in the context of the global trends in the import and
export of labor. Immigration magnet countries generally have labor shortages as
in the Middle Eastern countries while exporting countries benefit from remittances.
In other words, one might be tempted to ask whether the remittance that a
country receives from the export of both skilled and unskilled labor drives a
government’s policy towards emigration. This question is pertinent to Ethiopia
as the country exports both skilled and unskilled labor and its annual earnings
from remittances is estimated at about 3 billion dollars, a figure that is more
than the revenue it obtains from exporting products. In addition, the
government has been trying to finance mega projects through the issuance of low
interest and high risk diaspora bonds.
However, consistent with
theory, Ethiopians spend their remittance earnings on consumer goods and
alleviating family hardships. Remittance expenditures on consumption goods,
particularly imports, therefore, is believed to have played their own roles in
exacerbating the high cost of living in the country and widening its trade
deficit, in addition to raising the birr’s real exchange rate and escalating
real estate prices. Anecdotal evidence also shows that a good number of
Ethiopian diaspora members are deeply involved in the real estate sector,
particularly housing. Using its monopoly power on land, the government has been
engaged in evicting entire neighborhoods, including the forced removal of the
remains of the dead from grounds that traditionally belonged to the churches,
and building roads and auctioning the
confiscated lands at artificially inflated prices that are often set through
insider trading of information. This is in addition to continuously raising
rental prices. The use of remittances in real estate thus could only add fuel
to the fire, thereby making housing unaffordable to residents. Anecdotal
evidence also shows that remittances have played their own roles in fueling
corruption and heightening rural and urban land speculation.
Notwithstanding the
above, the GoE has been claiming that the country has been enjoying double‐digit real economic growth for about
one decade. The growth statistics however has been questioned by several
economists and as of late even magazines that used to be known for echoing the
government’s line of story have started to question the validity of the
government provided statistic.2 Secondly, the country is known to have achieved
“stability” since 2000, while at the same time neighboring countries such as
Sudan and Somalia found themselves embroiled in escalated internal conflicts
and with their neighbors. These stories spark a number of important questions.
First, given that the country is claimed to be at “peace” with itself and is also a peace‐maker in the Horn of Africa (such as contributing
troops in Somalia, Sudan and beyond), and with a “federal multi‐party system” in place, why would
one observe documents and criticisms against the government? Why should the
residents of a land with a growing economy and “federal democracy” choose to
emigrate en mass?3 In other words, could outmigration and economic growth move
in the same direction or move in different directions or have no association
between themselves at all? To answer these questions in the context of
Ethiopia, one needs to review the relevant literature.
Figure 1: Graphical
representation of migration transition theory*
3 According to a 2010
Gallup Poll, 46% of Ethiopia’s adult population wishes to leave the country, if
allowed.
*Source: de Haas (2010)
Migration transitions: a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the
developmentaldrivers of international migration’. IMI Working Papers. Oxford,
University of Oxford
A quick review of the
relevant literature suggests that as development level increases immigration
increases as the country becomes a magnet for foreigners and its own diaspora population.
However the association between emigration and economic development is negative.
Figure 1 shows the migration transition theory of de Haas (2010), which is now
popular among researchers on migration. Validating the migration transition
theory in the context of Ethiopia requires an empirical research.
Unfortunately, empirical research on economic, social and demographic data is
generally hard in developing countries because of data reliability and more
importantly the politicization of such information.4 To test the validity of de
Haas’s (2010) model, we reviewed the academic and policy literature, applied
qualitative‐phenomenological methods
of research and outlined policy options.
In its November 2012
report, the International Migration Institute at Oxford University confirmed
the common knowledge of Ethiopians, and documented that between 1960 and 2000 Ethiopia’s
outmigration was one of the lowest in the Horn of Africa.5 Authorized emigrant population
(including asylum seekers) in 2000 was less than 300,000 ‐ lower than Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia,
Sudan, Uganda and Yemen. As a percentage of the size of the population, Ethiopia’s
outmigration was also the lowest. However, this statistics requires further
analysis as the impacts of conflicts in Eritrea, Tigrai, Ogaden and Somalia,
famine, conscriptions for the various wars and the red terror were responsible
for driving thousands of refugees to the Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya.
Fransen and
Kuschminder (2009:17) of Maastricht University6, citing the World Bank, confirmed
the findings of the International Migration Institute and stated that
“migration flows out of Ethiopia are relatively small”. The World Bank
estimated an emigration rate of 0.6 percent of the population in 2005, which
amounts to a stock of 445,926 persons”. And in -migration (refugees from
neighboring countries) and outmigration of Ethiopians to neighboring countries as
refugees, according to the UNHCR, balanced one another, suggesting that the net
migration during the period was close to zero. However, like the Institute of
Migration’s data, Fransen and Kuschmider’s work heavily relied on limited literature
review and extrapolated statistics using data from IOM, UNHCR, OECD and the
World Bank. Their results therefore, may not be useful to predict or understand
the scale and form of the migration current crisis. Furthermore, an important
factor in analyzing international data is that most of the reports contain only
the number of refugees that have been recognized. For instance the World Bank’s
recent report does not include registered asylum seekers or the number
undocumented Ethiopians living out of their country. The bank reported that
between 2009 and 2011 the number of Ethiopian refugees who have been granted
refugee status were respectively 121,886; 154,295 and 288,844,7 showing an annual
growth rate of 26.59% and 87.2%. In sum, obtaining reliable data and
information about the Ethiopian outmigration is a major issue. Unfortunately,
the unreliability of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diaspora Department
figures compound the problem.
Notwithstanding the above
difficulties, in our December 19, 2013 article,
we attributed the Ethiopian outmigration mainly to push factors and following
the norm in the migration literature, we outlined the factors under four major
categories. We have reproduced them here for the benefits of our readers. The
four categories are (1) Supply‐Push (Predisposing or Repulsive)
Factors‐ which drive/force
migrants out of their country of origin. Examples include poverty, the lack of
economic opportunities and jobs, economic downturns, political oppressions, abuses
of human rights, religious intolerance (constraints), wars, conflicts and
insecurities in the home country; (2) Demand‐Pull‐factors‐ which in general are positive and
are responsible in attracting migrants. Examples include: higher wage rates and
better standard of living in destination countries; higher and steady demand
for cheap and unskilled labor in destination countries’ informal economies
(domestic work, construction, services such as cleaning, restaurant and fast
food services), political and religious freedom in destination countries; (3) Mediating
Factors, which are divided into two conflicting factors: (a)
Facilitating/encouraging factors‐ which are the ones that
trigger, enable and accelerate departure. Examples include the availability of
visas, passports, transport, communications, information, recruiters, brokers, traffickers
and smugglers, porous borders, and the resources needed for the journey,
distance to and between sending and destination countries and length of transit
periods. (b) Restraining/constraining factors or intervening obstacles‐ are the ones which work against making
the journey – such as the lack of the ones described in (a) above, high
migration costs, perceived risks, stricter controls of recruitments, stiff
punishments and penalties against smugglers and traffickers, rogue employment
practices in destination countries; and (4) Social network (pull) factors ‐ such as the existence of relatives,
friends and acquaintances in host/destination countries, available
opportunities for family unifications in host countries, or when individuals
send money to bring other family members to join them into the new (host) country‐ a chain migration which results in
migration fields or clustering of people from specific countries into certain
neighborhoods or small towns in the new (host) countries (e.g. China Town, Vietnamese
Town, Little Ethiopia, etc. in North America). Mediating factors also include
success stories of the diaspora.
Returning to the issue
about the link between economic growth and migration, in the case of Ethiopia,
unlike the growing domestic product data reported by the government and the
high rise buildings and construction projects that are undergoing in recent
years, the human development indicators
generally show that there has been little progress in alleviating poverty in
the country (According to UNDP’s 2011 survey,
Ethiopia is in the low human development category—positioning the country at
173 out of 187 with 87.3 percent of the country’s population lived in multidimensional
poverty (MPI)). Despite the big push and donor support, early human development
indicators reveal that Ethiopia, unfortunately, will not be able to meet many
of the MDG goals by 2015. Thus, the GoE must blame itself for washing away the
donor propelled gain in the economy by inflation. Perhaps, a better indicator
could be creating a misery level tracking index, which can be computed by the
sum of the country’s inflation rate, unemployment rate, augmented by annual
changes in outmigration and subtracting the country’s economic growth rate. In
this respect, in a recent paper, Abebe Shimeles and Andenet Delelegn (see African Development Bank Group Working paper No 182
September 2013), using household data that was collected by Addis Ababa
University in collaboration with Oxford University and the University of
Gothenburg attempted to empirically examine the welfare effects of rising food prices
(inflation). They show that between 2000 and 2006, the Ethiopian economy has
had a cumulative welfare loss of 53%. The “true” level of welfare loss was 12%
worse than what was estimated by the GoE’s statisticians. Between 2007 and 2013
Ethiopia has seen a series of sharp increases in the cost of living, reaching
as high as 64% in 2008. The country also “officially devalued
the Birr by over 102% against the U.S. Dollar between November 2007 and
February 2013 despite being warned that
devaluation would not have its intended effects without addressing the
country’s economic fundamentals.
While the increases are
not unparalleled by the history of hyperinflation, the growth claim made by the
GoE appears unparalleled indeed. The ramifications of these inaccuracies for economic
planning and hardship (misery index) and outmigration, in an environment of the
feminization of poverty are serious. Inflation also has wealth transfer effects and widening inequality especially when it
occurs under an environment of full control of land by the government, credit
channeling, excessive money supply and monetization of government borrowing,
and political‐party owned and state
owned enterprises. Indeed, there are numerous signs indicating that the
government’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) “belies
the reality on the ground”, is a “misguided
economic policy”, and too “fanciful” to
trust. As one of the progovernment local papers noted, the GTP was just one of
a “number of fashionable ideas and initiatives”
… concocted by the late Prime Minister Zenawi and his
party elites…” - the concocted ideas being just a “theoretical synthesis” rather than being practically
applicable to the Ethiopian context. As predicted by Ken Ohashi, the then World
Bank Country Director for Ethiopia, the GTP has become unsustainable,
all signs indicating its failure. The tell‐tale signs are indicated by: the government’s neglect of the manufacturing sector of
the economy (Economist, March 02, 2013, Enku Magazine’s interview of Mr. Mushe Semu, May,
2013 edition, Reporter, October 5, 2013, Addis
Fortune, March 9, 2014); the gloomier picture of the flower industry (Reporter, February 8, 2014);
the sharp declines in the country’s exports (Reporter:
October 5, 2013, January 11, 2014, Addis Fortune),
the deterioration of the country’s indebtedness (Ezana
Kebede, 2014); the credit crunch facing
the private sector (Reporter, February 8,
2014); the negative ramifications in foreign exchange shortages (Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2014, http://en.dagongcredit.com/content/details20_7992.html);
the deprived private sector: (IMF); the rising
tide of corruption (World Bank, Global Financial
Integrity, Hassan) and disturbingly, the falsely trumpeted “gains” in the agricultural sector, where most of the
out-migrants originate (AllAfrica.com, January
19, 2014).
Now that we have shown
outmigration is incompatible with a growing economy, the GoE and the donor
community need to take the bull by the horn and address key issues that hold
the economy from growing and also the drivers of emigration. The ruling party
cannot escape reexamining its land policy and restructure
the ownership structure in the economy, liberate the markets so that
private enterprise would flourish; it should allow the archaic finance industry
to respond to the realities of the economy; seriously fight inflation and corruption,
grant the poor the freedom to vote on policy, and put in place sound controls
against illicit financial flows and human smuggling; design and implement sound
population development and family planning policy; restructure public and
private information dissemination institutions to allow robust debate on
national policy. The government needs to guarantee and respect private property
and put in place reliable investor protection mechanisms. More importantly, it
needs to take concrete conflict prevention strategies and open the political
space at home in order to reduce political instability and minimize the
probability of yet another round of large scale outmigration. The available
data and the realities on the ground strongly show that both inter‐migration and intramigration have
become serious issues for the country. The GoE therefore needs to consider establishing
a research center for migration studies in one of the universities.
Outmigration also
requires reforming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor.
Like other nations, Ethiopia, on behalf of its citizens, needs to promote
cooperation and negotiate minimum labor standards in host countries. It must
push migrant recipient countries the International Convention on the Rights of
Migrant Workers and their Families (ICRMW), one of the core international human
rights treaties. For emigrants who go to specific destinations, the government
can create incentives for minimum level of skills certifications. It needs to
provide coping mechanisms and establish a desk in the embassies for handling
physical, emotional and sexual abuses and cultural prejudices faced by
immigrants, in general, and women in particular. The remittance obtained from
destination countries could justify the additional costs of providing the above
services. The country must be able to pass and implement effective regulation
against “agents” and human smugglers. The government also needs to re‐examine the de facto policy of using
remittances (i.e. exporting people) as developmental instrument, for the macroeconomic
effects are ambiguous at best.
The Ethiopian diaspora
community must also do its part. Most of the diaspora institutions are divided,
weak and poorly managed. Similar to the politics inside the country, the
diaspora is divided along political, ethnic and regional lines. Hence, there is
no “national consensus” and the government’s diaspora policy has become part of
the problem. The GoE leaders often face booing and protest demonstrations when
they travel abroad. They in turn label their critics as “extremists”,
“chauvinists” and even “terrorists”. The diaspora is predominantly unengaged
and a small proportion appears to be opportunistic. The majority fears reprisal
from the government for showing dissent or for not cooperating with the
embassies. With regard to the economic impact, other than the remittance, the
magnitude of diaspora’s “contribution” to development appears to be a moot point.
Furthermore, unlike out‐migrants of other
countries, Ethiopian outmigrants seem to have failed to pay attention to the
ongoing politics of their respective destination countries. The use of
immigrants as political punch bags by the Saudi authorities could have been
minimized if Ethiopian migrants were paying attention to the upcoming of
largescale and politically‐motivated deportations.
Finally, Ethiopian immigrants must take lessons from the recent deportations
and establish strong centers in their respective destination countries and
create a global network that supports the community in times of crisis.
Index:
1
This article was compiled from the speeches that were made at the 3rd Annual
International Conference ofEthiopian Women in the Diaspora which was held in
Washington DC on March 22, 2014. We thank the leadership team of the Center for
the Rights of Ethiopian Women for giving us the opportunity to share our
thoughts with the participants of the conference.
2
See for example the Economist of March 2, 2013.
3
According to a 2010 Gallup Poll, 46% of Ethiopia’s adult population wishes to
leave the country, if allowed.
4
At the time of preparing this article Prime Minister Haile Mariam acknowledged
that key statistical information that relate to land, poverty and youth unemployment,
etc. is often exaggerated and often misleading.
5 http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/projects/gmf‐pdfs/global‐migration‐futures‐using‐scenarios‐to‐explore futuremigration‐in‐the‐horn‐of‐africa‐yemen
6
http://mgsog.merit.unu.edu/ISacademie/docs/CR_ethiopia.pdf
7
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.REFG/countries
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