Causes and Factors Facilitating Human Trafficking in Ethiopia: The Case of Bati Town, Amhara Regional State

  • Wegayehu Tufa Negash School of Geography and Environmental Studies, HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY, ETHIOPIA
  • Awol Akmel Yesuf School of Geography and Environmental Studies, HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY, ETHIOPIA
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20372/ejss.v5i1.153
Keywords: Bati town, Human trafficking, Migration, Socio-economy, False promise makers

Abstract

Human trafficking is nowadays becoming a global concern due to its multifaceted causes and consequences affecting the life of thousands of people including men, women and children. This study aimed at analyzing the causes and factors facilitating human trafficking in Bati town of Oromo Administrative Zone, Amhara regional State. The specific objectives included identifying the major causes of human trafficking, identifying the major facilitating factors and mapping the transit and the major destination areas. The study employed a descriptive research design. The primary data for this study were collected from 232 migrant respondents selected using the random sampling technique and six key informants selected purposively. Questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used to collect data from migrants and key informants respectively. Descriptive statistic such as mean are used to analyze the data. Migration out of Bati town is initiated by both pull and push factors. The push factors include family and individual characteristics. Furthermore, economic disparities between the origin and destination areas, and the resultant variation in job opportunities in the destinations attract people to migrate. The survey results show that out of 232 respondents 89.65 percent migrate out of Bati town because of attractive labor demand in place of destination. In addition to this, the absences of legal travel agencies intermingle with the legal process, the lengthy time it takes and the increasing number of false promise makers in the town are the main  factors that aggravate the issue of trafficking in the town.The results of study revealed that  39.65% of respondents prefer illegal migration due to the absence of real legal travel agencies in Bati town and the surrounding zonal towns. The study also indicated the role of informal groups and false promise makers. Generally, the study concluded that the problems of human trafficking are related with economic issues. Therefore, stakeholders are recommended to come up with job opportunities for citizens and to make people more aware of the risk and consequences of trafficking. Finally, the findings of this study demonstrate the magnitude of the problem and could be used to tackle the challenges with the involvement of all actors.

References

Adopoju, A. (2005). Review of Research and Data on Human Trafficking in Sub-Saharan Africa, International Migration, 43(1/2):75-98.

Alemtshai.E. (2009). Migration and Vulnerability, Unpublished M.A.Thesis in Development Studies. The Hague, Netherlands.

Annan,J.,C.Blatlman and R.Horton.(2006). The State of Youth and Youth Protection in Northern Uganda: Findings from the Survey for War-affected Youth.

Bati Town Government Communication Office, 2013. Annual Report Amharic version.

Belayneh.T. and Tekle. (2000).Trafficking of Women from Ethiopia. Report, Women’s Affairs Sub-Sector, Office of the Prime Minister and IOM.

Berhanu, Lema. (2002). The Livelihood Strategies of Rural-Urban Migrants in Addis Ababa. Unpublished M.A.Thesis, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa.

Bezabih, T. (2008).Trafficking of Women and Children to alert area in Addis Ababa sexual exploitation. Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Central Statistical Agency, CSA.(2007). The 2007 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia Result for Amhara Region Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Eshetu, M. (2003). Women and Children Trafficking within and from Ethiopia, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

GIS Data. (2014). Map of Ethio-GIS.Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Gudetu Wakgari.(2014)Causes and Consequences of Human Trafficking in Ethiopia: The case of Women in the Middle East.International Journal of Gender and Women’s Studies, 2 (2): 233-246.

HailemichaelNigusu.(2014).Causes and Consequences of Human Trafficking: A Case Study in Metema Town. Unpublished MA Thesis, Department of Social Anthropology, School of Graduate Studies, Addis Ababa University,Addis Ababa.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,OHCHR.(2014).Trafficking in persons United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, Geneva Switzerland https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/OnePagers/Traffickingpersons_August2014.pdf [Accessed on October 22, 2014]

International Labor Organization, ILO.(2006). Emerging good practices on action to combat Child Domestic Labor in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, ILO, Tanzania.

ILO.(2017).Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_575479.pdf

Kebede, E. (2001). An assessment of the International Labor Migration Situation: The case of Female Migrants. GENPRO Working Paper No. 3, Gender Promotion Program, International Labour Office, Geneva.

Kothari, R. (2004). Quantitative Techniques, 2nd ed., New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, India.

Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MoLSA).( 2013). Report of returned Ethiopian Citizens Addis Abeba Ethiopia.

Oucho, J.O.( 2006).Migration and Refugees in Eastern Africa: A Challenge for the East African Community, in Cross, Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa Proceedings of an African Migration Alliance Workshop, South Africa.

Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat , RMMS. (2014). The Letter of the Law: Regular and Irregular Migration in Saudi Arabia in a Context of Rapid Change. Nairobi: Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat.

Seid Ali.( 2013). Assessment of Student Dropout: The Case of Bati Number One Primer School. College of Behavioral Science at Haramaya University, Haramay, Ethiopia.

Todres,J.(2011). Moving Upstream: The Merits of a public Health law Approach to Human Trafficking: North Carolina Law Review, Vol 89, No2 PP447-508.

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. (2001). Regional office or West and Central Africa .8.P paper presented at the first Pan Africa Conference on human trafficking Abuja, 19th-23rd, February 2001.

United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).(2006). Trafficking Persons, Global Patterns Vienna, Austria.

Published
2019-07-03
How to Cite
Negash, W. T., & Yesuf, A. A. (2019). Causes and Factors Facilitating Human Trafficking in Ethiopia: The Case of Bati Town, Amhara Regional State. Ethiopian Journal of Social Sciences, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.20372/ejss.v5i1.153
Issue
Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019)
Section
Articles

Copyright (c) 2019 Ethiopian Journal of Social Sciences

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after publication in EJSS.