ABSTRACT
In contrast to the international community, ‘Eritreans’ did not look to The Hague to remedy their difficulties. Those who were expelled from Ethiopia quickly moved on in search of refuge and in an attempt to find family members. ‘Eritreans’ in Ethiopia, however, confronted a very different set of choices: they could (initially) repatriate to Eritrea; they might remain as aliens in Ethiopia (in the face of ethnic discrimination) or they could leave the Horn. This chapter situates the flight of ‘Eritreans’ within a larger exodus of people leaving the Horn. The first section, ‘Politics, repatriation and the haemorrhage of population from the Horn’, examines the ICRC’s post-war repatriation of individuals from Ethiopia and Eritrea and a second, unregulated, movement of people out of Eritrea as refugees. The second section, ‘Transit routes out of the Horn and the experience of flight’, examines the movement of ‘Eritreans’ (and others) out of the Horn as they merge with a much larger, heterogeneous flow of individuals fleeing political persecution and/ or seeking economic betterment. All of these individuals are moving outwards along one of four ‘transit’ routes, each of which contains its own difficulties and dangers. The different routes are examined in some detail. I conclude by noting that there are tens of thousands of ‘Eritreans’ in Ethiopia who are likely to leave and thousands stuck in transit across Africa who are looking for refuge; however, a relatively small number of individuals make it to the West.
