Yemen 'better than Somalia'

2008-03-05 13:45

Kharaz - Yemen is a poor and often dysfunctional Arab country, but to thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians say it is better than the misery and danger at home.

Obah Idli, a 19-year-old from Somalia's anarchic capital Mogadishu, made it to an isolated refugee camp in the desert, relieved to be alive after paying smugglers to sail her across the Red Sea from Djibouti with 30 of her compatriots.

"It was a very small boat. Everyone was fighting for space and water came in," she said, shifting her pink shawl as she waited for UNHCR agency staff to register her at the Kharaz camp, 180km from the port city Aden.

She said: "I'd heard the smugglers put people in the sea. When we landed, the water came up to our mouths but we made it. Last night I slept well, before I was always scared. You can't stay in Mogadishu. I need a better future."

Many Africans considered Yemen to be a gateway to other parts of the Middle East and to the West. It shares a border with oil-producing Saudi Arabia, which hosts millions of foreign workers.

700 bodies washed up

But some Africans find their odyssey ends here, in lives half-lived because Yemen is itself too poor to offer a better future.

The flow from Somalia began after warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Clan warfare, famine and chaos engulfed the horn of Africa, where an interim government and its Ethiopian allies were now battling Islamist rebels.

Nearly 30 000 Somalis and Ethiopians came ashore in Yemen last year. About 700 bodies washed up, some gnawed by sharks and another 700 people went missing, UN officials said.

Samer Haddadin, a UNHCR protection officer, said: "Smugglers stuff people onto small boats like sardines. They spend two or three days like that and arrive with skin problems because they have to urinate where they sit. There is no way to move."

Passengers could expect no mercy from the crew. Tales abound of beatings, rape and killings on the voyage.

Haddadin said: "One group told me they had been with a woman whose baby was crying - the smuggler took the baby and dropped it in the sea."

Some, like Idli, arrived from Djibouti, a sea route that was much shorter and safer than the more commonly used one from the port of Bosasso in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

70 refugees rescued

At least 37 Somalis were drowned off Yemen on February 20 after the captain of their vessel ordered them to swim ashore, the Yemeni news agency Saba reported. About 70 were rescued.

It's hard to tell refugees from economic migrants, but Yemen treated all Somali arrivals as refugees and the rest as illegal immigrants, unless they obtained refugee status from UNHCR.

In a dusty alleyway in Aden's Basateen slum, home to Somalis and Yemenis with links to Somalia, a young man who gave his name as Mahed said he was aiming for the Saudi border.

"It's hard to enter Saudi Arabia. We pay $50 and it's dangerous, but we will try. We have no hope in Somalia."

When Africans land in Yemen, half of them simply disperse on their own, UNHCR representative Adel Yasmin has explained. The rest, mostly Somalis, passed through reception centres, with about a third of them seeking UNHCR assistance to get to Kharaz camp.

Many of these hop off the buses in Aden before ever reaching the camp and go to Basateen or elsewhere in Yemen. Even those who get to Kharaz rarely stay for more than three months.

- Reuters