Solidarity in Ukrainian Refugee Protection: A Neglected Lesson of Refugee Response in the Horn of Africa: What AU and IGAD can Offer?

While hosting a huge number of refugees every year, the region of the Horn of Africa is in the anguish of man-made and natural disasters. Nevertheless, the region continues to be a shelter for the number of refugees. Similarly, a war between Russia and Ukraine has brought a huge burden to neighbouring nations in hosting Ukrainian refugees. In response to Zelensky's call for saving Ukraine, the European nations have been showing strong solidarity for Ukraine by assisting with military equipment and hosting the refugee. However, this solidarity has also intertwined with social, cultural, political and economic objectives. The response for refugees both in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Europe has a different outlook. Many are still persistent in their efforts to reach out to refugees of Ukraine in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the impact of the influx of refugees on socio-economic events is not even a concern as it is also backed with solidified assistance. Most of the host countries are members of the European Union and NATO. Thus, geographically, Europeans' response can be seen as helping out forced refugees. However, on the socio-cultural interactions side, the community shares ethnic, religious and language similarities. Most importantly, the emergence of a pro-democracy government in Ukraine enhanced political solidarity. Thus, relying on the fundamental question of how the European approach is successful in hosting a huge number of refugees, the focus of the study was then finding out what lesson the states in the Horn of African have missed in refugee response and immigration policy. The study mainly argued that Europeans have shown social, cultural and political (institutional) solidarity in the treatment of Ukrainian refugees, which in turn has led to the success of their refugee treatment. These questions and arguments would be supported by a secondary set of data on the qualitative research method.