Global Issues

Ethiopia

• Source country for men, women, and children subjected to conditions of forced labor and sex trafficking.

• Girls forced into domestic servitude and, less frequently, commercial sexual exploitation.

Six Ethiopian women were trafficked to China in 2010 for forced prostitution.

• Ethiopian women exploited in the sex trade after migrating for labor purposes – particularly in brothels, mining camps, and near oil fields in Sudan

• Female genital mutilation (FGM), abduction, and rape are explicitly criminalized; however, enforcement of laws inconsistent.

• In 2000, the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey found that FGM was practiced on 80 percent of all women surveyed, while the total dropped to 74 percent of all women surveyed in 2005.

• School-related violence limits the educational opportunities and achievements of girls. In a study in Ethiopia, 23 percent of girls reported experiencing sexual assault or rape en route to or from school.

• 2005 Demographic and Health Survey found that 81 percent of women believed a husband had a right to beat his wife.

• 48.7% of women in report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 58.6% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 55.9% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual and/or violence in their lifetime.

• 16.6% report forced first sex.

• 7.5% report abuse during pregnancy

 

Advocacy

• Tourism and Culture Bureau issued a tourism code of conduct in 2009 banning facilitating or participating in sex tourism by tour operators or tourists.

 

Source: United Nations Development Fund for Women; UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011