Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (AP) — When 19-year-old Nigas Joseph told his parents he was about to leave his home to Ethiopia’s Tigray area and go to Saudi Arabia, they asked not to go.
The two children already formed an intersection via the Gulf of Aden, and were later devastated by the war. Joseph’s brother is currently in a prison in Yemen and has illegally entered the country. His sister illegally arrived in Saudi Arabia. That means it’s difficult for her to leave.
On August 3, 2025, five friends of Joseph and his town of Adi Qeyih boarded a boat heading to Yemen. That night it capsized. Of the nearly 200 people on board, only 56 survived.. Joseph was not one of them.
“His parents are deeply shocked and saddened,” his uncle Ledae Barge said in a phone interview. “They can’t even express their sadness.”
Nigus Yosef is one of 132 people who went missing from the boat that capsized this month. One of the countless people of African countries has gone missing on a journey in search of a new life.
A dangerous journey
The family they leave behind knows that there is a high possibility of misfortune. Boats are often overcrowded and unable to withstand rough seas. There is another danger once on dry land. Immigrants are vulnerable and have fewer resources and protections, which earns easy prey for human traffickers and tricksters.
Senite Tadesse says her 27-year-old daughter has reached Yemen, but is caught by a snare who communicated with Tadesse through Facebook and demands a ransom of 6,000 USD to free her only child.
Tadesse said in an interview with the Associated Press in the capital Addis Ababa, that she sold the car and all the jewelry to raise cash and deposited the money into an Ethiopian bank account.
However, the temptation demanded more. She sold all her belongings. They still wanted more. Unsure what else to do, she went to the police armed with the local bank account number that the temptation had been using.
Meanwhile, she was on Facebook and was about to get her daughter’s news. Finally, a post from the survivor confirmed that Tadesse’s daughter had been killed. To date, no arrests have been made.
I’m driven to despair
Ethiopia has been relatively stable since the end of the war in the country’s Chigray region in 2022, but the unemployment rate among young people is high and there is still a pocket of anxiety.
“Many young people don’t see their own future in the country that doesn’t prioritize their needs,” explained Yared Hailemariam, an Ethiopian human rights advocate based in Addis Ababa. “The reasons for this migration are the lack of economic opportunities and the growing conflict. Young people face the choice to attach weapons or provide them to their families to fight in endless conflicts.”
The war at Tigray was the reason why Nigas Joseph didn’t graduate from school. When the conflict began in 2020, he was a seventh grader and he dropped out to join the Tigray army. When the ceasefire was signed in 2022, he returned home but was unable to find a job. Three years later, he was desperate.
Residents of the area say traffickers capture the despair and their networks extend to remote and rural villages.
Eden Schmier was only 13 years old when he left Addi Qeyih with Joseph and his friends. Her parents say she was preyed by people’s smugglers on the town’s open market day, and they persuaded her to leave with the group. Her parents had heard nothing from her until one of the other immigrants called them when they arrived at Uha Limat near the Ethiopian-Djibouti border. This news made them worried and sick.
After the boat capsized, one relative of the survivors was able to send voice messages from Saudi Arabia via messaging app IMO, confirming that Eden’s body had been recovered. Of the six young people who left Adi Qeyih, only two survived.
“Her mother is heartbroken,” Eden’s father, Schmier Haduch, told The Associated Press. “The pain is really overwhelming.”
Ethiopia warns
In response to recent tragedy, the Ethiopian government warned its citizens “to avoid taking illegal routes” and “avoid the services of human traffickers,” urging people to “pursuing a legitimate path to ensuring opportunities.”
However, Girmachew Adugna, an immigration scholar specializing in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, points out that legal migration channels are slow and take longer. “Passports are difficult to obtain due to rising costs,” he says. “Young people often have little or no access to legal immigration routes, which leads to them moving through irregular means.”
According to UN figures, more than 1.1 million Ethiopians were classified as immigrants who left the country in 2024 and lived abroad in 2024, from around 200,000 recorded in 2010.
in spite of Yemen’s civil warthe number of migrants arriving there tripled from 27,000 in 2021 last year to 90,000 last year, the International Organization for Migration or IOM said last month.
To reach Yemen, migrants are often taken to smugglers in dangerous, overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. The IOM said at least 1,860 people died or disappeared along the route that included 480 people who had been drowned.
“Our young people are almost dying from this dangerous migration,” says Haduch, father of Eden Schmier. “They are victims of the cruelty of human trafficking. When will this tragedy end?”
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Associated Press writer Khaled Kazziha in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this report.
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