African migrants die in Yemeni camps
At least eight African migrants have died in makeshift camps in war-torn Yemen, the UN’s migration agency said on Thursday, warning that thousands were living under “inhumane conditions”.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the migrants had died of complications related to acute watery diarrhoea at the Ibn Khaldoon Hospital in Lahj, a southern district controlled by the Yemeni government in its war with northern rebels.
The IOM said it learned of the deaths on Wednesday. Most were Ethiopian.
“I am deeply saddened by the deaths of these eight migrants, who were among the thousands of migrants being held in deplorable conditions across Yemen,” said Mohammed Abdiker, the IOM’s director of operations and emergencies.
“We have decried this policy to the authorities, urging them to take a humane approach to irregular migration.”
Abdiker said the IOM had evidence guards had fired on migrants at a sports stadium in Aden, bastion of the embattled Yemeni government, wounding two and leaving a teenage boy “likely paralysed for life”.
“IOM stands ready to support Yemen and other regional partners to identify sustainable responses to irregular migration, which do not involve the shortsighted abuse of vulnerable migrants and fully respects international law,” Abdiker said.
“I am greatly concerned that this dire situation will further deteriorate.”
Yemen has descended into chaos in the past four years of conflict, with both the Iranlinked Huthi rebels and a rival progovernment military alliance led by Saudi Arabia accused of acts that could be war crimes.
But the country remains on an established route for migrants from the Horn of Africa, who typically first travel by land through Djibouti before eventually undergoing perilous boat journeys across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. Many say they aim to travel by land to oil-rich Saudi Arabia to find work. But many do not survive the journey, dying at sea or at the hands of panicked smugglers.
The IOM said about 5,000 African migrants, mostly Ethiopian and some from Somalia, were being held in makeshift camps in the government strongholds of Lahj, Abyan and Aden.
More than 1,400 people were “detained” in the Lahj camp alone, it said.
Nearly 150,000 migrants arrived in Yemen in 2018, according to the UN.
In January the UN announced plans to airlift about 3,000 Ethiopian migrants to their capital Addis Ababa from Yemen’s capital Sana’a. Hundreds have already returned.
Voluntary flight returns were resumed in 2018 after being suspended in 2015, when the Yemen war took a turn for the worse with the intervention of the regional military force led by Saudi Arabia.
Since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemen war, nearly 10,000 people have been killed, according to the World Health Organisation, although other groups say the toll is significantly higher.