Ethiopia Announces Plan to Close Eritrean Refugee Camp

Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugee and Returnee Affairs oversees the country’s 26 refugee camps, including the Hilaweyn Refugee Camp in Dollo Ado, which primarily accommodates Somalian refugees. (EU/ ECHO and Save the Children)

The Ethiopian government plans to shut down Hitsats, which is one of the four refugee camps in the northern Tigray region that hosts around 100,000 Eritreans. Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA) announced its intention to close the camp and relocate residents in early March, but the spread of COVID-19 delayed progress. However, Eyob Awoke, deputy director-general of ARRA, told AFP that the process of closing could resume by late April. At that point, the residents of Hitsats will either be relocated to the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps, or they will be granted a permit to live in Ethiopia.

“We are ready to start. But we cannot start with a big number [of COVID-19 cases]. We can start with a small number,” Awoke said. “We can even start before the end of this month.”

Human Rights Watch stressed that the lack of clarity in the timeline and procedures of the camp closure is making it difficult to “plan for viable, safe alternatives.” 

“No one explains clearly our rights, where we go, what is the time frame, all these details. We are very worried—we already have our own problems. In addition to our everyday stresses and difficulties, this is adding more,” an anonymous Eritrean refugee in the Hitsats camp said.

Awoke attributes the decision to close Hitsats to UNHCR funding cuts and explained that a merger would improve resource management in the face of shortages. 

Ann Encontre, Ethiopia’s UNHCR representative, does not think that the 14 percent funding reduction justifies shutting down the camp. She also stresses that the other two camps do not have the resources to handle the merger: “there's not enough water, there's not enough sanitation, there are not enough medical and health services.” She further pointed out that the relocation could make refugees more vulnerable to COVID-19. 

The Hitsats camp houses 26,652 Eritreans, including 1,600 unaccompanied children, according to UNHCR. Its closure would do nothing to relieve the strain on unaccompanied Eritrean minors after Ethiopia changed its migration policy in January. The policy disallows the registration of certain new arrivals, including unaccompanied migrants, and reverses the policy that automatically granted refugee status to every Eritrean asylum seeker. Instead, Ethiopia now evaluates asylum seekers on a case-by-case basis.

Thousands of Eritreans, mostly youth, migrate to escape forced conscription in their home country every year. 

Before the policy change, Ethiopia had been an important provider of immediate care arrangements for unaccompanied Eritrean children, especially education and counseling. Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, explains that now “unaccompanied Eritrean children who seek asylum in Ethiopia face an impossible choice between lack of legal protection and services and uncertainty inside Ethiopia, or the risk of serious abuse if they return home.”

“The concern is really underage children, minors, who don’t have documentation. Those are the ones who are at risk because they get caught up in trafficking, in smuggling, in these illegal movements towards Europe and elsewhere,” Encontre said.

Eyob has defended the policy, claiming that some Eritreans were migrating without a reasonable fear of persecution. “Some of them are just coming to live in Ethiopia because they feel that living in Eritrea is somehow very difficult,” he said.  ARRA explained in a press release that the earlier policy led to a “high influx of unaccompanied minors, illegal migrants and others who do not fulfill the criteria laid [out] for refugee status determination under the international instruments”.

Bereket Zemuy, a refugee from Eritrea and spokesperson for the Eritrean Refugees University Graduates and Students Association, explains that “every single Eritrean family is being affected by the dictator system [sic] of the country. So whoever is trying to escape and flee their own home country, they are just coming in fear of their own lives, even those unaccompanied minors, even those families, whoever. Those unaccompanied minors, once they get back home they will be considered as traitors.”