Ethiopians

Ethiopians are one of Bahrain's largest African communities, between 20,000 and 35,000 people in all, about 15,000 of them Oromo, Tigrayans and other peoples besides the Amhara, most of them young women from the Ethiopian highlands employed as live-in domestic workers in Bahraini and expatriate homes, with smaller numbers in cleaning, hospitality and trade. They come from several Ethiopian peoples, chiefly Amhara, Oromo and Tigrayans, and Amharic is their common language. Orthodox Christians among them worship openly in an Ethiopian Orthodox congregation on the Anglican cathedral compound in Manama and light the Meskel bonfire each September on the beach at Bilaj Al Jazayer, while the Muslims among them, many from Wollo and Oromia, pray in Bahrain's mosques. Recruitment has risen and fallen with visa restrictions, disputes over runaway workers and the pandemic, and in 2026 Ethiopia and Bahrain were negotiating a labour agreement to regulate it.

Ethiopians in Kuwait are a community of roughly 15,000 to 30,000 people, about 13,000 of them Oromo, Tigrayans and other peoples besides the Amhara, almost all of them young women from Ethiopia's highlands who came to work as live-in maids in Kuwaiti homes; there are only about ten Ethiopian men for every hundred women. Their number has fallen from over 75,000 in the early 2010s, when Ethiopians were by far the largest African community, after Ethiopia banned domestic-work migration and a new labour agreement was slow to take effect. They come from several Ethiopian peoples, chiefly Amhara, Oromo and Tigrayans, and use Amharic as their common language. Orthodox Christians among them keep the long fasts and gather where they can for the coffee ceremony and the feasts of Meskel and Timket, while the Muslims among them, many from Wollo and Oromia, pray in Kuwait's mosques.

Ethiopians are the largest foreign community in Lebanon apart from Syrians and Palestinians, about 65,000 people, about 40,000 of them Oromo, Tigrayans and other peoples besides the Amhara, nearly all of them women who came from the 1990s onward to work as live-in maids in Lebanese homes. Two-thirds live in the hills and suburbs of Mount Lebanon and Beirut, many in Christian districts such as the Metn and Kesrouan, where many employers sought Christian housekeepers. Most are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, with Muslim women from Wollo and Oromia and a growing Pentecostal minority; with no Ethiopian Orthodox parish in the country, Sunday is spent in borrowed chapels and in shared rooms where women cook injera, braid each other's hair and pool savings. Their numbers have fallen from about 160,000 legal workers in 2018, as the 2019 financial collapse and the wars of 2024 and 2026 left thousands abandoned outside their consulate or turned away from shelters.

Ethiopians in Libya are young Oromo, Amhara and Tigrayan migrants and refugees who came overland through Sudan, most of them hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. They enter by the desert route through Kufra and Tazirbu, where traffickers hold many for ransom, and wait in Tripoli's poorer districts or in the towns on the road north. Christians among them, members of the Ethiopian Orthodox and evangelical churches, remember the 2015 killing of about 30 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian migrants by Islamic State militants in Libya. Ethiopia has no embassy in Libya, so the International Organization for Migration arranges the papers for those who return home.

About 36,000 Ethiopians live in Qatar, up from some 22,000 a decade ago, most of them domestic workers, cleaners, hotel and security staff, with a smaller circle of professionals and Ethiopian Airlines staff. Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, Silte and others share Amharic as their common language and gather each year for an Ethiopian Day around the anniversary of the 1896 victory at Adwa, staged in 2024 under the theme 'Multiethnic Ethiopia in Qatar'. The community runs its own school in Al Shahaniya, opened in 2020 on premises given by the Amir, and Orthodox Christians are building their first church in Doha on land granted by the government. Roughly half are Orthodox Christians and much of the rest Sunni Muslims, with small evangelical fellowships.

Ethiopians have come to Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, women recruited as live-in maids and young men walking the perilous route through Djibouti or Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden and through war-torn Yemen to the Saudi border. The roughly 80,000 counted here are the Ethiopians who are neither Amhara nor Tigrayan: mostly Oromo, Ethiopia's largest people, many of them Muslims from Arsi, Hararghe and Jimma, with Gurage, Silte, Hadiya, Wolaytta and others. Most documented Ethiopians are women working in Saudi homes, nearly three for every man, while the irregular migrants, mostly men, live outside any count, and hundreds of thousands have been deported since 2017. Over the coffee ceremony in shared rooms and on rare days off, Afaan Oromo and Amharic mix; Muslims pray openly, while Orthodox and Protestant Ethiopians can only worship secretly in homes.

Ethiopians in the United Arab Emirates number roughly 200,000, about twice as many as in 2018; besides the Amhara and Tigrayans, they are Oromo, Gurage, Silte, Wolaita, Hadiya and others from southern and central Ethiopia, most of them young women working as live-in maids and nannies for Emirati and Arab families, with men as cleaners, guards, drivers and deliverymen. They share Amharic as their common language and on their day off fill the coffee shops, salons and injera restaurants of a small Ethiopian quarter in Dubai's Deira. More of them are Sunni Muslims than Christians, especially among the Oromo and Silte, while the Orthodox among them worship at the Ethiopian church that opened in Abu Dhabi in 2023 on land given by the state. Many came after Ethiopia reopened legal recruitment to the Emirates in 2019, and those who leave abusive employers easily fall out of legal status.

Ethiopians in Yemen are mostly young migrants crossing the country on foot on the Eastern Route to Saudi Arabia, often called the world's busiest maritime migration route: more than 100,000 arrive each year by smugglers' boats from Djibouti and Somalia, and at any time perhaps 250,000 are in the country. For decades most were Muslim Oromo; since the wars in Tigray and Amhara, Orthodox Christian Tigrayans and Amhara make up a large share, and the three peoples travel and camp apart. On the way they pick qat on Yemeni farms or clean restaurants in Aden to pay the next stage, and many end up stranded, detained or abducted for ransom, while Saudi border guards have killed hundreds trying to cross the mountains of Saada. A smaller settled community of registered refugees lives in Aden and Sana'a.