Living without them: Stories of families left behind (Episode 2 – Ethiopia‪)‬ Living without them: Stories of families left behind

Tens of thousands of families around the world are missing relatives who left to migrate to another country and haven’t been heard from again. In 2019-2020, IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) and a team of independent researchers carried out a project in Ethiopia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe to better understand the experiences and the challenges that families in these countries face while searching for their missing migrant relatives.

By raising awareness about such families and their specific needs, the project aims to motivate action by governments and other actors to support them.  

This is the second episode of a four-part series that looks at the findings of this project. Project Coordinator Kate Dearden talks with Mengistu Tadesse, Program Officer at IOM Ethiopia, about why young Ethiopian men and women find themselves taking unsafe migration journeys that put them in danger of going missing, and to Dr. Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste, who led the research with families in Ethiopia for this project, about what families are doing to look for their missing loved ones and what can be done to better support them.

The country report with the findings of the project is free to download here: https://publications.iom.int/books/fa...​

To learn more about IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, visit: www.missingmigrants.iom.int

Music by Blue Dot sessions.
Illustration by Salam Shokor / IOM.
Living without them – stories of families left behind, is a podcast series produced by IOM's Data Analysis Centre in Berlin.