The Khartoum Process: A sustainable response to human smuggling and trafficking?

This policy brief by the Institute for Security Studies evaluates the Khartoum Process, a partnership between the European Union and East and North African states designed to tackle human smuggling and trafficking. The author argues that the process is overly securitised, lacks transparency, and risks empowering authoritarian regimes in the Horn of Africa while ignoring the root causes of migration and the human rights of migrants.

• The Khartoum Process is characterised by a significant lack of transparency, with consultations held off the record and subsequent meetings in London (November 2015) and Khartoum (June 2016) not being advertised or publicly reported.
• The EU has shifted its migration response from a development-focused approach toward a security-based one, allocating €40 million to the Khartoum Process, with the majority of funds directed toward capacity building for law enforcement, the justice sector, and border security.
• The Khartoum Process conflates human trafficking and human smuggling, which the author argues allows partners to implement security actions against trafficking while ignoring the governance and rule-of-law issues that drive smuggling.
• The framework risks empowering repressive regimes by providing funding and equipment to state security apparatuses. For example, EU funds from the Valetta Trust Fund were reportedly earmarked to train Sudanese border police and provide equipment to the Sudanese government, despite the role of state-backed militias like the Janjaweed in ethnic violence.
• The process creates incentives for source and transit states to use refugees as 'bargaining chips' to obtain concessions from the EU, rather than integrating them or addressing their long-term care.
• The author contends that the Khartoum Process ignores the economic importance of remittances, which provided an estimated US$1.5 billion to Ethiopia and US$1.4 billion to Somalia in 2015, serving as a vital safety net for vulnerable communities.

APA

Reitano, T. (2016). The Khartoum Process: A sustainable response to human smuggling and trafficking? Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/policybrief93.pdf

Chicago

Reitano, Tuesday. The Khartoum Process: A sustainable response to human smuggling and trafficking? Institute for Security Studies, 2016. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/policybrief93.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Reitano |first1=Tuesday |title=The Khartoum Process: A sustainable response to human smuggling and trafficking? |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=November 2016 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/policybrief93.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{reitano2016khartoum, author = {Reitano, Tuesday}, title = {{The Khartoum Process: A sustainable response to human smuggling and trafficking?}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2016}, month = nov, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/policybrief93.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }