{"id":6021,"date":"2015-04-19T09:20:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T09:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/munkhafadat.com\/en\/?p=6021"},"modified":"2015-04-19T09:20:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T09:20:26","slug":"over-250000-east-african-refugees-trapped-in-yemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/munkhafadat.com\/en\/uncategorized\/over-250000-east-african-refugees-trapped-in-yemen\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 250,000 East African refugees trapped in Yemen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many refugees and asylum-seekers from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea say they have nowhere else to go<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Tens of thousands of East African refugees and asylum-seekers are at risk of being left behind in Yemen\u2019s roiling violence, deprived not only of safe options for evacuation but also of a home country that might take them in, activists and U.N. officials said this week.<\/div>\n
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Since pitched fighting between Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels and forces loyal to the ousted president erupted in March, escape from the country\u00a0has been arduous even for foreign citizens<\/a>\u00a0and wealthy Yemenis. Airports are under fire and commercial transportation cut off, forcing the most desperate to charter simple power boats and make harrowing journeys across the Red Sea.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But for the over 250,000 registered Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers, the situation is even more trying. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners have a contingency plan to receive 100,000 refugees in Somalia\u2019s relatively stable regions of Somaliland and Puntland, and another 30,000 in Djibouti, but that process will unfold over the next six months. And it is barely underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that there are limited options for people to get out,\u201d said Charlotte Ridung, the Officer-in-Charge for the UNHCR in Yemen. \u201cSome have fled by boat, but many ports are closed, and fuel is an issue so the options for escape are indeed limited.\u201d<\/p>\n

As gunbattles and aerial bombardment engulf the port city of Aden, at least 2,000 people have fled urban areas to take shelter in the nearby Kharraz refugee camp, Ridung said. Thousands more refugees and Yemenis alike have begun to make the dangerous voyage across the water, including 915 people who fronted $50 each for boats from the Yemeni port of Mukha to Somalia \u2014 among them Somalis\u00a0returning home for the first time<\/a>\u00a0in decades.<\/p>\n

There, the UNHCR registered “women and children who arrived extremely thirsty and asking for water,” Ridung said. They included a pregnant woman who was immediately transferred to a hospital to deliver her baby.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, asylum-seekers and migrants traveling in the opposite direction from East Africa continue to arrive in war-wracked Yemen. Last Sunday, the UNHCR registered another 251 people, mostly Ethiopians and Somalis, who arrived by boat at the port city of Mayfa\u2019a. Whether they were unaware of the violence in Yemen or hopeful mass evacuations from the country might take them somewhere safer is unclear.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people think when they reach Yemen they\u2019ll get passage to Europe right away, but it is wrong information,\u201d said Sana Mohamed Nour, 21, an Eritrean refugee and community leader in the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa. “We are trying our best to get out.”<\/p>\n

For those like Nour, whose parents brought her to Yemen from\u00a0politically oppressive Eritrea<\/a>\u00a0when she was just an infant, Yemen’s violence has made the daily hardships of refuge that much worse. Many refugees, who are only able to find informal work as maids, construction workers or day laborers, have lost their jobs in recent weeks as businesses shut down and people hole up in their homes. The closure of ports means food and other supplies are dwindling in the country, which imports roughly 90 percent of its food. \u201cAt night, we can\u2019t sleep,” she said. “And when we go out during the day, we\u2019ll be asked for ID or passport [by security forces], and there\u2019s a lot of people [being] taken to prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

The options for escaping Yemen are somewhat more acceptable to Somalis, the largest refugee contingent in Yemen at over 236,000, according to UNHCR estimates. While violence has plagued Somalia since the early 1990s \u2014 including the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab insurgency that\u00a0still terrorizes pockets of the country<\/a> \u2014 many Somali refugees have taken the war in Yemen as their cue to finally return,\u00a0if not to their home towns then to the Somaliand and Puntland regions.<\/p>\n

The situation is different for political refugees, who include most of the over 14,000 Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees or asylum-seekers left in Yemen. They say returning home\u00a0would mean political persecution, imprisonment or violence<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThe Somali refugees can go back to their home country, because there was no problem, and it will take them,\u201d said Abdulmalik Mohamed Ahmed, a 42-year-old ethnic Oromo refugee from Ethiopia, who lives in Aden with his five children. \u201cBut we have no place or country to welcome us. We are just waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmed said many of the estimated thousands of Oromos in Yemen are fearful that the Ethiopian government, which\u00a0denies it persecutes Oromos<\/a>\u00a0and considers them economic migrants, will try to use evacuation efforts to whisk his people back home and perhaps into prison. In recent days Ethiopian embassy officials have deployed in Oromo neighborhoods in Aden, hoping to round up volunteers for government-run charter flights back to Ethiopia, he said.<\/p>\n

But the idea of relocating anywhere in the Horn of Africa, as the U.N. is planning, is unfeasible, Ahmed said. Somalia, which borders Ethiopia to the east, is within reach of the government in Addis Ababa that imprisoned Ahmed once and still holds his father. \u201cIf we go back it is clear, we will face our fate there,” he said.<\/p>\n

The U.N. has told refugee community leaders that it is \u201cworking on\u201d getting them out, Nour said, but there has been little sign of progress. Members of the Eritrean diaspora have been called upon to help negotiate transportation for refugees, but she fears “no one else is talking about refugees in Yemen.”<\/p>\n

“We are waiting, and every day the situation gets worse.”<\/p>\n

Source: Aljazeera america<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many refugees and asylum-seekers from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea say they have nowhere else to go Tens of thousands of East African refugees and asylum-seekers are at risk of being left behind in Yemen\u2019s roiling violence, deprived not only of safe options for evacuation but also of a home country that might take them in, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,1],"tags":[23,128],"yoast_head":"\nOver 250,000 East African refugees trapped in Yemen | ELL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/munkhafadat.com\/en\/uncategorized\/over-250000-east-african-refugees-trapped-in-yemen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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