In May 2019 ReliefWeb carried an IOM notice saying the European Union had committed another €18 million to the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of Africa, lifting the EU total for the regional effort to about €43 million.
The program, running from 2017 toward 2021, focused mainly on Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia, and it aimed to save lives along desert and sea routes while helping returnees rebuild at home.
Extra European money for assisted return and protection sat beside Gulf labor cracks and Mediterranean deaths, and it showed how donors treated Horn migration as both a humanitarian and border-management file.
Kept as migration archive, the May 2019 top-up is a dated marker of EU–IOM spending before later Red Sea and Mediterranean crises grew again.
Sources: ReliefWeb / IOM