Human rights activists have criticised Ethiopia’s continuing recruitment of women for domestic work in Saudi Arabia

In early March, Hirut* was playing with her toddler at her home in Addis Ababa’s Mekanisa district, when she got a call from an unknown number asking if she wanted to work in the Middle East.

It came as a shock for the 27-year-old, who spent six years as a domestic worker in Kuwait before returning to Ethiopia in 2020.

“I was afraid because I thought they might be human traffickers and wondered how they found my name and number,” she told Al Jazeera.

The callers told Hirut that they were state employees, who had obtained her file from a government database for returnee migrants from the Middle East.

Since the ‘80s, Ethiopians have been flocking to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait in search of blue-collar jobs, mostly arranged by local Ethiopian recruitment agencies or human traffickers. This time, the Ethiopian government is overseeing the entire process, including recruitment and advertising.

Administrative documents seen by Al Jazeera reveal plans to recruit as many as half a million women between the ages of 18-40, to send to Saudi Arabia to work as domestic workers.

In early March, notices first began appearing on Facebook and on billboards in Ethiopian towns and cities, urging women to register for employment in Saudi Arabia, at government offices.

Returnees like Hirut who are familiar with the culture and the language are being actively solicited alongside new recruits. In remote areas, public officials, including deputy mayors, are intervening to personally oversee orientation sessions.

“We’re being told that this is an opportunity of a lifetime,” says one recruit attending a session in the northern Amhara region. “I was told that this was a quicker path to success in life than school.”

In a communique, the Amhara region’s East Gojjam district administration said it intended to recruit 13,000 women there.

A state-sponsored recruitment programme

In early 2020, Saudi Arabia temporarily banned labour migration from Ethiopia to curb the spread of COVID-19. The ban was lifted in February and Ethiopian authorities launched their recruitment drive.