Researchers' meetings and outreach activities in Ethiopia

Around Refugee Week 2022, TRAFIG researchers met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to compare and discuss insights from empirial research and to disseminate key research findings to various stakeholders.

On 23 June, the Faculty of Law of Addis Ababa University organized a conference in the framework of World Refugee Week. The conference ‘Everyone has the right to seek safety - The role of academia in the protection of refugees’ was attended by policy makers, practitioners, academics, and refugees. Fekadu Adugna and Markus Rudolf presented key findings of their joint TRAFIG research in Ethiopia. (see the conference program)

From 22-24 June, TRAFIG team members Fekadu Tufa, Mulu Getachew and Desalegn Amsalu (AAU, Ethiopia), Markus Rudolf (BICC) and Carolien Jacobs (Leiden University) organized a training and capacity building event at Addis Ababa University. The team members together carried out a comparative analysis of the research findings from the Congo and Ethiopia. We also held sessions on building a case – analytical specification of qualitative and quantitative empirical data, and on academic writing.

From 25-26 June, Fekadu Adugna, Markus Rudolf and Carolien Jacobs held a joint writing workshop on the comparative dimensions of protracted displacement situations for refugees and IDPs in DR Congo and Ethiopia. The workshop helped us to develop and sharpen our ideas for a comparative paper on which we will work in the coming months. This will help us to further disseminate our research findings.

In addition, colleagues from AAU and BICC met with key stakeholders in Addis Ababa to inform them personally about key findings of TRAFIG research in the region and to share our recent publications. The encounters included meetings with

• the Programme Officer for Migration management and displacement at the EU Delegation to Ethiopia,
• a representative of the German Embassy (Horn of Africa programm) in Ethiopia,
• the director of the African Union Cooperation Office and the Flight & Migration Competence Center of the German Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, and
• a programm officer at the Danish Refugee Council in Ethiopia.