Menu
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/3d0991qwpi2k8a0aocy0qfnjdrhq1b3zsz7f\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/1546xgmedbsrrte5aw6pjey7qjii2c37jauy\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
The difference now is that for the past few years, many more people are deciding to make the trip because of the dire economic situation in the region, which is fuelled by drought and war. According to IOM, the number of people making the trip almost doubled between 2014 and 2019. Two years ago, 138,000 irregular migrants travelled from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, and even though pandemic-related concerns deterred a number of people from making the trip in 2020, some 37,500 migrants still landed in Yemen last year. More than 32,000 migrants are believed to be currently trapped in Yemen. IOM\u2019s programme to voluntarily return people who have become stuck on the migrant trail has also been stymied by border closures. The result is an intensifying and largely invisible humanitarian crisis in a country fraught with crises\u2014at least 19 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, and 17 million are at risk of starvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Perhaps the best answer to the question of why people decide to make such a perilous journey comes from history. Human beings have travelled along this route since the days of mankind\u2019s earliest journeys. It is most probably the path over which, 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens left Africa and went on to populate the world. People probably always will find a way to continue migrating along this path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference now is that for the past few years, many more people are deciding to make the trip because of the dire economic situation in the region, which is fuelled by drought and war. According to IOM, the number of people making the trip almost doubled between 2014 and 2019. Two years ago, 138,000 irregular migrants travelled from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, and even though pandemic-related concerns deterred a number of people from making the trip in 2020, some 37,500 migrants still landed in Yemen last year. More than 32,000 migrants are believed to be currently trapped in Yemen. IOM\u2019s programme to voluntarily return people who have become stuck on the migrant trail has also been stymied by border closures. The result is an intensifying and largely invisible humanitarian crisis in a country fraught with crises\u2014at least 19 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, and 17 million are at risk of starvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Perhaps the best answer to the question of why people decide to make such a perilous journey comes from history. Human beings have travelled along this route since the days of mankind\u2019s earliest journeys. It is most probably the path over which, 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens left Africa and went on to populate the world. People probably always will find a way to continue migrating along this path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference now is that for the past few years, many more people are deciding to make the trip because of the dire economic situation in the region, which is fuelled by drought and war. According to IOM, the number of people making the trip almost doubled between 2014 and 2019. Two years ago, 138,000 irregular migrants travelled from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, and even though pandemic-related concerns deterred a number of people from making the trip in 2020, some 37,500 migrants still landed in Yemen last year. More than 32,000 migrants are believed to be currently trapped in Yemen. IOM\u2019s programme to voluntarily return people who have become stuck on the migrant trail has also been stymied by border closures. The result is an intensifying and largely invisible humanitarian crisis in a country fraught with crises\u2014at least 19 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, and 17 million are at risk of starvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dearth of funding for the UN\u2019s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM is able to provide for these people. \u201cMigrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen, with the least amount of support,\u201d said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThis isn\u2019t surprising, given the scale of the crisis and the sheer level of needs across Yemen, but more support is needed for this group. It\u2019s really concerning that we have over 32,000 stranded migrants across the country without access to the most basic necessities like food, water, shelter and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Near Ras al-Ara, the IOM mobile team set up a clinic to tend to migrants. The migrants can be stuck in the region for months\u2014on rare occasions even years\u2014as they try to work odd jobs and move onwards. \u201cWhen migrants arrive in Yemen, they\u2019re usually extremely tired and in need of emergency medical care,\u201d said Headon. \u201cMobile teams travel around where migrants arrive and provide this care. The teams are made up of doctors, nurses and other health workers as well as translators, because it\u2019s vitally important that the migrants and the doctors there can communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yasser Musab, a doctor with IOM\u2019s Migrant Response Point in Aden, said that migrants \u201csuffer in Ras al-Ara.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere are so many smugglers in Ras al-Ara\u2014you can\u2019t imagine what they do to the migrants, hitting them, abusing them, so we do what we can to help them.\u201d Women, he said, are the most vulnerable; the IOM teams try to provide protection support to those who need it. Around 16 per cent of migrants recorded on this route in the last three months were women (11 per cent are children and the rest are men). \u201cWomen are more vulnerable to being trafficked and also experiencing abuse in general, including sexual abuse and exploitation,\u201d said Headon. She explained that, unlike men, women often were not able to pay the full cost of the journey upfront. \u201cThey are in debt by the time they get to their destination. And this situation feeds into trafficking, because there\u2019s this ongoing relationship between the trafficker and the victim, and there is exploitation there and an explicit expectation that they\u2019ll pay off their debts.\u201d She said that with COVID-19, more migrants have been stuck in Yemen, and women have been trapped in situations of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of funding shortfalls, the invaluable work of providing food, medical assistance and protection support falls to the same IOM response teams. \u201cWe distribute water, dates, biscuits,\u201d said Musab, \u201cbut the main job of the medical teams is to provide medical care.\u201d He said that some cases can be treated locally, but some injuries and illnesses require them to be transferred to hospitals in Aden. During the pandemic, medical workers have also been on the front lines of checking for symptoms of the virus among recently arrived migrants. (Contrary to some xenophobic propaganda distributed in Yemen, confirmed cases among migrants have been very low.) Ahmad, a farmer in his forties from Ethiopia\u2019s Oromia region, was one of the migrants who came to Musab\u2019s team for a check-up. This is his second time travelling from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, where he lived twice before the police deported him back to Ethiopia. (Deportations and repatriations of East African migrants have occasionally occurred from Yemen, and more systematically from Saudi Arabia, although these depend upon the wax and wane of bilateral relations between host nations and the migrants\u2019 countries of origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why had he decided to make the journey again? \u201cIn Ethiopia there\u2019s no money,\u201d he said, repeating the common refrain. \u201cIn Saudi there\u2019s a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money,\u201d Ahmad continued, saying he has four children to provide for back in Ethiopia. \u201cI only want for my family to live in peace, to make enough money for my family.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n On his first trip, in the early 2000s, Ahmad travelled from Ethiopia through Somalia to get a boat to Yemen and then walked 24 days to the southern Saudi city of Jazan. He was deported to Yemen after six months but was able to enter again, staying there for about 15 years and working on a farm before he was apprehended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 2020, Ahmad decided to make the trip to Saudi Arabia again, but this time his journey was curtailed around Ras al-Ara because of COVID-19 restrictions and local checkpoints. \u201cTo survive, I\u2019ve worked here as a fisherman, maybe one or two days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trapped here. I\u2019ve been stuck here for eight months in this desert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some East African migrants and refugees have been trapped in Yemen for much longer. Since Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, refugees have lived in Aden\u2019s Basateen sector. Sometimes locals call it Somal<\/em>, the Arabic word for Somalia, because so many Somalis live there. People who make the journey from Somalia are automatically considered refugees when they arrive in Yemen. Among them there are those who insist they are better off than they could ever be in their own country despite the ongoing war in Yemen and its privations (of water, health care and safety). IOM and UNHCR run clinics in the area to provide emergency care to migrants and refugees respectively, but with funding for humanitarian assistance running low, not everyone can be provided for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saida, a 30-year-old mother of three from Mogadishu, recently visited a UNHCR-sponsored clinic in Basateen so that a nurse could check up on her children. She wore a jet-black hijab<\/em> and cradled her youngest, a seven-month-old named Mahad. She said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children. Two of them\u2014twins named Amir and Amira\u2014suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children. \u201cI came here to provide a better life for my children; in Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,\u201d Saida explained. She was pregnant with Mahad when she took the boat from Somalia eight months ago, and she gave birth to him as a refugee in Yemen. In Somalia, Saida was constantly afraid of violence. Aden, which has been relatively peaceful since she arrived, seems like a relatively safe place to her. \u201cThe war is much worse in Somalia,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel safer in Yemen. I\u2019m saving my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war\u2014Headon explained that people leave out tanks of water for the migrants traversing the deserts of south Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Saida says, she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR\u2019s services to keep her children alive. \u201cThe community health volunteers have helped me a lot. They have helped me take care of my children and put me in touch with specialists, and they taught me how to continue with the treatments,\u201d Saida continued. \u201cThey also taught me how to identify signs of my children relapsing into sickness or having contracted other diseases. Now, thanks be to God, everything is going well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, some migrants have settled too, carving out careers of sorts for themselves on the fishing dhows and on long sea journeys transporting people like themselves. On a beach dotted with anchored boats the afternoon after the two Mohameds were freed, a young Yemeni man in a sarong was distributing fistfuls of cash to migrants sitting on the ground. At first, the man claimed that the money was payment for work on the boats, but then he suggested that, in fact, the labourers had been working on a farm. It was unclear why they were being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The men who sat around him in a circle were mainly African migrants, and they waited shouting and jostling before quietening down, as each man got up, explained to the young man what work he had done and received his money. \u201cI fished more than he did,\u201d one shouted. \u201cWhy are you giving him more money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first to get up was Faisal, a 46-year-old Somali man with a pronounced swagger and cracked teeth, his head wrapped in a white turban. He paid around $200 to come to Yemen from Somalia\u2019s Puntland region in 2010, and he has lived in Ras al-Ara for the past seven years. He had worked as a soldier in Puntland, but then he feuded with his brother, lost his job and was forced to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ras al-Ara, Faisal works odd jobs to get by. On good days he makes just under $20. \u201cSometimes I work as a fisherman and sometimes I travel to Somalia on a boat to get other Somalis and bring them here.\u201d When he wants to find work, he\u2019ll come to the beach in the evening, wait with other casual labourers, and then fishing captains or smugglers will come and hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Headon pointed out that the boats are often packed full to increase smuggling profits and that the smugglers often force people from the boats. Usually, Faisal said, there are about 120 people in each 15-metre dhow. \u201cThey\u2019re overcrowded, and they often sink and many people drown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faisal said that the Yemenis had been very accommodating to him. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a homeland, Yemen now,\u201d he said. Still, he wants most of all to return home once he has saved some money. (IOM and UNHCR run a return programme for Somali refugees, but it has been on hold since the pandemic began.) \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t like it here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dream is to return to my country. If I had money, I\u2019d go back to my country directly.\u201d<\/p>\n","post_title":"A Great Unseen Humanitarian Crisis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"a-great-unseen-humanitarian-crisis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:35:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=5387","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Perhaps the best answer to the question of why people decide to make such a perilous journey comes from history. Human beings have travelled along this route since the days of mankind\u2019s earliest journeys. It is most probably the path over which, 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens left Africa and went on to populate the world. People probably always will find a way to continue migrating along this path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference now is that for the past few years, many more people are deciding to make the trip because of the dire economic situation in the region, which is fuelled by drought and war. According to IOM, the number of people making the trip almost doubled between 2014 and 2019. Two years ago, 138,000 irregular migrants travelled from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, and even though pandemic-related concerns deterred a number of people from making the trip in 2020, some 37,500 migrants still landed in Yemen last year. More than 32,000 migrants are believed to be currently trapped in Yemen. IOM\u2019s programme to voluntarily return people who have become stuck on the migrant trail has also been stymied by border closures. The result is an intensifying and largely invisible humanitarian crisis in a country fraught with crises\u2014at least 19 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, and 17 million are at risk of starvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Women and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Women](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/tabq5uxc72wux3x3yz2lokictxm12i1nm3ed\/original.jpg;resize(2000,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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IOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/8sfyg41fipccrc3cf7k07lq595txxqv2c934\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/z9kaa85l4tiymp4wb4lmzcptenoqcnelztny\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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The words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/r4hux9p61u6mi043e6oivp4rfsf4oczmcdot\/original.jpg;resize(2000,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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An Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"An](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/7amni09ao96tk9vclxhcxn1vwi1gc8z52zxn\/original.jpg;resize(2000,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Sitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/0jckn4kn6gkdz4owznz5mo3r99szhkwdctdt\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/5nn27e34vxga7tt0dyuqopx8eqja0m3d6pac\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/3c68u1e3eahx89jujrhocg8l9stsbraqtw5m\/original.jpg;resize(1600,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
A Government-supported settlement in Marib City. To qualify for free tents and water, these migrants work as street sweepers in the city as well as receiving a nominal sum from city officials. Many migrants are travelling through Yemen and heading for Saudi Arabia, where work opportunities can be better.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSitting on a low wall, East African men wait to be checked by an IOM mobile medical team after having just arrived from northern Africa by smuggler boats.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn Ethiopian migrant lies on a gurney used by IOM mobile doctors to check people who have recently arrived.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe words \u201aGod Halp Me\u2018 tattooed on the arm of a young East African man at a shelter in Aden, on Yemen\u2019s south coast.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIOM mobile teams perform health checks on recently arrived East African migrants and refugees. Most arrive in the early morning after leaving the north African coast the night before.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWomen and children in the Al-Basateen neighbourhood. The area is home to the majority of Aden\u2019s refugees, many of whom are from Somalia.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDoctors attend to patients at a UNHCR-supported free primary health-care facility in Aden\u2019s Al-Basateen neighbourhood.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/exposure.accelerator.net\/production\/photos\/2m92hbbfwu9eoywld6f3leyu54q54wqkp3qr\/original.jpg;resize(800,_).jpg?auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nA Government-supported settlement in Marib City. To qualify for free tents and water, these migrants work as street sweepers in the city as well as receiving a nominal sum from city officials. Many migrants are travelling through Yemen and heading for Saudi Arabia, where work opportunities can be better.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n