The danger zone: Migrants in war-torn Yemen, seeking opportunity for their families
Yemen has been at war for more than 6 years, and yet migrants from other countries continue to arrive here. Most of them hope to continue northward into Saudi Arabia, where there have been many job opportunities for day labourers. But many of them are held by smugglers for days or even months until their families pay ransoms. Whether or not they are kidnapped, migrants face hunger, theft, injury, or death along the way. Regardless, the fact that they take such a perilous journey is a sign of how desperate things are back home.
The following are three stories of courageous migrants.
“We spent every day fearing death”.
Ras al-Ara is a small windswept town in Yemen, known for its fishing and for its smugglers. Many boats transporting migrants and refugees land there because of its proximity to the Djiboutian coast.
Recently, just outside town, two slender young men from central Ethiopia in red T-shirts, both named Mohamed, were ambling along the cracked tarmac under the blaring sun. One of the young men was 17 and the other 18. A mobile team from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) stopped to give them food. IOM teams support many migrants in Yemen.
The Mohameds were friends, and they decided to leave their home country when an older man told them they could find work abroad. He introduced them to a smuggler, who agreed to take them through Djibouti and across the sea to Yemen. They did not understand that the country was in the middle of a civil war.
The elder Mohamed recounts their first week in Yemen. Six days earlier, after a journey at sea that lasted around 12 hours, their boat had landed just before dawn on the shore nearby. “We arrived on the boat, and immediately we were surrounded by men with guns,” he said. “They demanded money and held us until we paid.”
In Yemen, migrants like the two Mohameds face kidnap, torture, detention and abuse by smugglers, armed groups, and criminal gangs, who try to extort already impoverished families. Kidnappers will get their captives to call their families and funnel more to their facilities, from where they promise to spirit the migrants to Saudi Arabia.
"We were just being beaten, and there was nothing to think about except the beatings,” the elder Mohamed continued. “We spent every day there fearing death.”
It took the young men’s families about six days to gather the money and transfer it to Yemen.
The dearth of funding for the UN’s Yemen response threatens the already limited essential services IOM can provide for these unfortunate souls.
“Migrants are among the most vulnerable people in Yemen,” said Olivia Headon, IOM Yemen’s spokesperson. “It's 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.”
Ibrahim’s dearest hope — dashed
His skin clung loosely to his aching, visible bones.
It had been months since Ibrahim had touched a mattress. The smugglers would never have allowed him such simple comfort. Safe in the Lahj hospital while receiving care through support from the International Organization for Migration and EU Humanitarian Aid, Ibrahim was around 1,000 kilometers and a world away from everything reassuring and familiar to him. Yet, memories of recent horrors — months of severe beatings and forced starvation at the hands of criminal gangs — were ever-present in his mind.
Ibrahim’s journey began in Ethiopia with an ambition to end his family’s intergenerational poverty. He never expected that this aspiration would lead to a near-death experience and thousands of wasted dollars.
Like hundreds of thousands of other migrants from the Horn of Africa over the past few years, Ibrahim was attempting to reach the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. People on this route typically hope for no more than making it to their destination to help their families prosper moderately. Most have no idea of the experiences they will have to first endure or that they may never make it.
Most migrants do not get the medical attention they need after suffering at the cruel hands of smugglers. Those reached by IOM’s health teams are lucky.
“In Somalia we were very hungry”
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 said the clinic is essential for the health of her young children.
Two of them — twins named Amir and Amira — suffered from severe acute malnutrition, she explained, and the clinic provides essential support to her and nutrition for her children.
“I came here to provide a better life for my children. In Somalia we were very hungry and very poor,” 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.
Ordinary Yemenis, for their part, often feel a duty to help migrants and refugees, despite the privations of war.
Saida says she cannot find regular work and she relies on UNHCR’s services to keep her children alive. “The 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,” Saida continued. “They 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.”
With help from the UN, more migrants and refugees will be able to say the same, that “everything is going well with them.”
This story draws from stories published by the UN in Yemen here and here. Compilation of stories produced with editorial support by Elie Baaklini, Development Coordination Office. For more information about the United Nations' work in Yemen, please visit: Yemen.UN.org.
To learn more about the results of our work in this area and beyond, please read the latest UNSDG Chair Report on DCO.