From frying pan into the fire
Aden – Zoubiba Mohamed fled Ethiopia seeking a better life, only to be ensnared by Yemen’s bitter civil war, and now the mother-of-two ekes out an existence in a squalid refugee camp.
She hoped to use Yemen as a stepping stone on her way to reach oil-rich Gulf nations, but – like thousands of migrants – she became embroiled in its seven-year-old war between Huthi rebels and government forces.
“We have no life here,” 34-year-old Mohamed said, showing her identification card issued by the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR. “We are between life and death.”
Despite the conflict, about 190 000 migrants – many from war-ravaged nations in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Somalia – are stuck in Yemen needing aid, according to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM). “Tens of thousands... are stranded throughout the country, unable to travel onward and unable to return home,” IOM says.
Many did not realise the nightmare they would face when they crossed the Red Sea for Yemen, said Nadia Hardman, a refugee specialist from Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“Half of them do not know that the country is at war when they arrive.
“The passage is fraught with so many challenges along the way, lethal challenges. Not everyone makes it to the destination.”
Yet, despite the fighting, Yemen remains a crossroads.
Nearly 6 000 migrants arrived in January alone, according to IOM figures, with about 85% Ethiopians, and the rest Somalis.
From Yemen, travel north to Saudi Arabia is blocked. The route crosses the front line between the Iran-backed Huthis – who seized the capital Sanaa and swathes of territory in 2014 – and the Saudi-led military coalition that intervened to back the government in 2015.
Unable to travel further, Mohamed initially found work in Sanaa as a domestic help. But she was forced to flee again after protesting about the deadly blaze that swept through a migrant detention centre in the capital last year, killing 44 people.
Hardman said about 40 000 migrants were forced out of Sanaa by the Huthis, following the fire, and have been “abandoned”.
Mohamed was one of them. She left her two children with a Yemeni family in Sanaa and fled south to the government-controlled port city of Aden.
Along with hundreds of others, she lives at Aden’s Khor Maksar camp underneath ragged sheets strung up on ropes, offering little respite from the blazing sun.
“There are rats, snakes and other animals here, we don’t sleep at night. We only eat if Yemenis help us, or if restaurants give us leftovers,” she said.
Alia Ibrahim, who is also stuck in Aden, said that at least in Sanaa the Ethiopian workers had their own bedrooms. “Here we have nothing,” she said. –