Ethiopia faces one of the most complex human mobility environments in the world, with a range of social, economic, political, and climatic factors driving populations within and outside its borders.

IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) is a system that monitors human mobility within Ethiopia to provide essential insights into the location, vulnerabilities, demographic breakdown and needs of displaced and mobile populations to provide the Government of Ethiopia, humanitarian and development partners, as well as donors and other relevant stakeholders with a useful evidence base for planning, advocacy, and response.

Since its launch in September 2016 in Ethiopia, the DTM has grown to be a fully integrated component of Ethiopia’s national and sub-national information management architecture, as it is the official source of data on internal displacement in the country.

In Ethiopia, mobility tracking captures internal displacement and return through three annual rounds of Site Assessments (focused on IDPs and the availability of services in their areas of displacement) as well as returning IDPs through the Village Assessment Surveys (focused on host community capacity to absorb returns targeting IDPs, returning IDPs, returned migrants and host community members and their access to services with a focus on livelihoods and reintegration).  Mobility tracking data is largely used to inform humanitarian response and development planning and as such is coordinated with both humanitarian and development actors in country as well as with the Ethiopia Disaster Risk Management Commission. Flow Monitoring captures inter-and intra-regional migration flows daily at key identified transit locations. This information is largely used to inform more developmental programming including migrant assistance and protection programming. This data is also shared with humanitarian and development counterparts in the country and is collected in close coordination with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Both DTM components intend to provide an evidence-base for programming and policy that is increasingly integrated and area-based. In addition to mobility tracking and flow monitoring, DTM Ethiopia also deploys thematic household level surveys to provide representative, granular information which can be triangulated with pre-existing DTM data collected through key informants and focus group discussions. This data enables the humanitarian and development communities to obtain important insight into the needs, conditions, vulnerabilities, and intentions of IDPs which can be particularly useful in informing programs, especially with regards to durable solutions, livelihoods, and other Humanitarian Development Nexus (HDN) related programming and policy initiatives.

DTM Ethiopia currently deploys over 200 staff and enumerators to track displacement, returns and migrant movements in the country.