Leveraging Iddirs to mitigate migration

an evidence-based, grassroots strategy

Abstract

Ethiopia's forced migration crisis is driven by economic, political, and environmental factors. Conventional, top-down interventions have yielded limited success due to challenges with cultural legitimacy, sustainability, and trust. This paper argues that sustainable solutions require a paradigm shift towards leveraging endogenous institutions. It investigates the potential of Iddirs — traditional mutual democratic aid associations — as a grassroots infrastructure to address the root causes of migration, presenting empirical evidence from recent field research. The study employs a qualitative mixed-methods approach, combining a desk review of academic literature and organizational reports with primary data from a recent field studies. This synthesis constructs a comprehensive and evidence-based analytical framework. The analysis, corroborated by field data, reveals that Iddirs represented by the Ethiopian Iddirs' Coalition Council Social Institute (EiCCSI) network offers unparalleled scale, trust, and operational efficiency. A two-pronged framework is proposed and preliminarily validated, demonstrating how Iddirs can foster localized job creation through micro-venture funds and C2P partnerships, and lead community-aware campaigns to dismantle misinformation. The Kotebe University study and other assessments undertaken at various times including assessments by the EiCCSI, provide concrete examples of successful small-scale enterprises and effective community messaging, underscoring the model's distinct comparative advantage in trust, cost-effectiveness, and long-term viability. Empowering Iddirs is a preferable and a necessary strategy for building community resilience. The study recommends formal policy recognition, targeted capacity-building and systemic data integration to harness this social capital. The Kotebe University study evidence confirms that Iddirs are already active agents of change and dynamic institutions ready for a scaled developmental role, requiring only strategic support to scale their impact. This paper moves beyond the documented social functions of Iddirs, using original field research to frame them as dynamic agents of change in migration mitigation. It offers a novel, evidence-based, and culturally-grounded model that challenges the hegemony of external development interventions.