Horn of Africa: migrate to Yemen or die trying

Horn of Africa: migrate to Yemen or die trying

29 December, 2010 | By William Spindler (Middle East Online)
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The fishing village of Bab El-Mandab, some 190 km west of Aden, in
southern Yemen is the closest point in the Arabian Peninsula to Africa.
Here, in a small office by a petrol station, staff of the Danish Refugee
Council (DRC), a UNHCR partner organization, meticulously record the
number of boats carrying migrants and refugees from the Horn of Africa
which land in this country almost every day.

From January to

October this year, some

43,000 people -13,000

Somalis and nearly

30,000 Ethiopians –

made the dangerous trip

across the Red Sea or

the Gulf of Aden in

flimsy boats. An

unknown number

perished in the attempt.

Far from the eyes of

the world, a human

tragedy of huge

proportions has been unfolding for years.

Relying on an extensive network of contacts in the police, army, coast
guard and among local villagers, DRC staff travel up and down the coast
in search of recently-arrived migrants from Africa. They work closely
with UNHCR and the Yemeni Red Crescent, which provides first aid,
water and high-energy biscuits to the new arrivals.

Earlier this year, in the Al Kharaz refugee camp some 40 km west of Bab
El-Mandab, UNHCR staff interviewed an Ethiopian man who had arrived
in Yemen the day before. He looked haggard and morose. "I took a boat
from Obock in Djibouti," he said through an interpreter. "To get there, I
had to walk through the desert for two days from the Ethiopian border. I
was kept by people smugglers in an isolated place near Obock with
hundreds of others; men, women and children."

There was no food or drinking water, he explained. The smugglers sold
bottled drinking water at extortionate prices. Those who couldn't pay had
to drink water from some nearby wells. The water from the wells was
salty and contaminated. "Those who drank it got sick and many died," he
said. "Every day, while I was there, four or five people died of hunger or
diarrhoea."

Since June, at least 40 Ethiopian men have died after arriving in Yemen
from Djibouti. Their corpses have been discovered by local villagers or
authorities near Bab El-Mandab and brought to the attention of UNHCR
and its partners. A doctor at the medical clinic in Al Kharaz said that in
three days in August they had admitted 26 Ethiopians suffering from
severe gastroenteritis.

"Yemen allows Somali refugees fleeing armed conflict, gross human
rights violations or persecution to enter its territory," said UNHCR
Assistant Representative for Protection in Yemen, Ann Maymann. "This
constitutes a lesson in what refugee protection is all about and many
states could draw inspiration from Yemen. At the same time, the
challenges are huge and more attention should be paid to the humanitarian
situation unfolding here."

Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and faces many
problems of its own, including internal conflicts. Some Somalis and most
Ethiopians, don't stay, preferring to try and enter Saudi Arabia where
they hope to find work as labourers, builders or housemaids. "If you
have money, the smugglers take you by car to Saudi Arabia after you
land in Yemen," an Ethiopian migrant explained. "If you don't, you have
to walk all the way to the border."

On the way, some of the migrants and refugees fall prey to people
traffickers, who sell them into sexual slavery and forced servitude in
Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East.

On September 25 a court in Aden sentenced two men and a woman to
10 years imprisonment for trafficking a young Somali girl to Saudi
Arabia. The girl was reunited with her mother and both have now left
Yemen for a new life in Europe. Most victims of trafficking, however,
are not so fortunate: it is estimated that some 12.3 million people around
the world have been victims to human traffickers. The buying and selling
of human beings for exploitation is tied with arms dealing and is the
second largest criminal industry in the world after drug trafficking, and
the fastest growing, according to the US Department of Health and
Human Services.

Courtesy