The selection of participants for the Humanitarian Corridors program in Ethiopia is a crucial task. It is carried out in the refugee camps and city centers by a team of specialists including doctors, interpreters, and humanitarian social workers from a variety of local and international organizations (like UNHCR, Caritas Italiana, the Community of Sant’Egidio, Gandhi Charity, and others). Selection is chiefly based on the vulnerability requirement for individuals and family units.
Under the 2009 European visa rules and the UNHCR’s definition of “vulnerable person,” beneficiaries must be chosen on the basis of physical vulnerabilities, like health problems or disabilities, of personal or family difficulties, like single mothers with minor children or unaccompanied minors, or of the fact that the prospective beneficiary is a political dissident in their home country.
To choose beneficiaries who meet these criteria, Caritas social workers and the Community of Sant’Egidio collaborate with UNHCR and Gandhi Charity, an NGO founded in Milan in 2003 by Dr. Alganesh Fessaha. Gandhi Charity is active in several Ethiopian refugee camps, where it provides medical assistance for elderly and sick residents. It also runs a mill that provides food for around 850 orphaned children in the Mai Aini camp. Since 2008, the association has also worked in Egypt to free the Eritrean migrants jailed for illegal immigration there, particularly in Sinai. One refugee provided a clear description of the first phase of cooperation, in which representatives from these groups came to the camps:
I was in Hitatz [refugee camp]. By chance I found the opportunity to come to Italy because I took care of the women with children or the children without parents – this was my role, and I knew all the issues people there were dealing with. The women there go through everything; they face many, many issues, from those raising children without fathers, to those who experience rape. I know these problems well, and in the beginning my role was to help such people in the camp. That’s how [Caritas] got to know my story and I had this chance.
UNHCR provides a list of possible candidates and Caritas and Community of Sant’Egidio social workers organize at least three rounds of interviews with prospective beneficiaries. Over the years the relationship with UNHCR has been reinforced, in order to identify vulnerable people in need of assistance more precisely.
The first interview, carried out at the refugee camp, serves to meet the potential beneficiaries and understand their physical, personal, and family situations. The second interview moves to check personal documents and the prospective beneficiaries are given information about the Humanitarian Corridors project. Then, the Caritas and Community of Sant’Egidio social workers carry out a final interview with the refugees a few days before their departure, to explain the rules of the program and to provide basic information about life in the communities where they will be resettled. The Caritas and Sant’Egidio staff provide information not only about their rights and duties as participants in the Corridors project, but also about the laws and social mores of Italy more generally.
After the final interview, sometimes video calls are arranged between beneficiaries and the communities that will receive them, which allow them to start to get to know each other.
Finally, the Ethiopian Refugee Agency (ARRA) must approve the final list of names, which is then sent to the Italian authorities (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior) for additional security checks. Once these are completed, the Italian Embassy in Addis Ababa provides the refugees with temporary visas that allow them to travel to Italy. The selection procedure ends when the selected refugees take flights to Italy, operated by Ethiopian Airlines.
