ADDIS ABABA: A charter flight sponsored by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) has seen 210 Ethiopian migrants return home after being stranded in Yemen. The flight, which was funded by a USD 2.1 million donation from the Netherlands, brings to more than 9,500 the number of destitute Ethiopian migrants helped by IOM to leave Yemen since 2010. This is the latest in a series of IOM flights that have returned Ethiopians stuck in Yemen and facing uncertain futures and hardships. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian migrants and refugees have entered Yemen since the end of July, according to a new report published by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC). The report said that some 51,000 Ethiopians have illegally crossed into Yemen after the short boat trip. It comes as Yemen continues to witness an increase of refugees from different embattled countries, including Ethiopia. The majority of the Ethiopians enter Yemen illegally by small boats coming from Djibouti, Puntland and Somalia, according to a 2012 report released by the DRC, a private humanitarian group. Allen Jelich, the DRC manager in Yemen, said Ethiopians often immigrate due to the deteriorating economic situation in their country. He said his organization works to assist Ethiopian refugees in Yemen by helping to improve living standards. “The situation of the Ethiopian refugees and immigrants has worsened in line with inadequate reporting on these issues," Jelich said. “There are three groups of Ethiopians in Yemen," he said. “The first has job opportunities and stable social relations in the country. The second one plans to spend time in Yemen to collect money for smugglers and then go to Saudi Arabia. The third uses Yemen as a stepping-stone to Saudi Arabia. Jelich said Yemen often hosts immigrants who are illegally smuggled to Saudi Arabia." Yemen is looking to implement a new series of measures that would curtail the rising number of Ethiopian migrants that are entering the Arab Peninsula through its borders. According to Interior Minister Abdul-Qader Qahtan who was meeting with Ethiopian ambassador to Yemen Hasan Abdullah Ali in late October, the two sides are looking at “the possible means to enhance the coordination between the security authorities in the two countries." Qahtan said that the security bodies' readiness to present “all facilities required to return the Ethiopian refugees to their home," expressing the government's “keenness on strengthening the bilateral relations with Ethiopia." Some 300 Ethiopian nationals who had been stranded in Yemen returned home late last month after they had been stuck in Yemen and Gulf countries for months, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. The migrants, who had illegally entered Yemen in the hopes of finding a better life economically, had suffered in their struggle to return home. A charter flight by the IOM carried 275 Ethiopians back to Addis Ababa. In total, nearly 1,000 Ethiopian migrants, stranded in Yemen, are being flown home by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with the last flight scheduled for early October in an effort to help the Ethiopians leave what has become an abusive situation. According to an IOM statement, the first chartered flights occurred last week and carried over 600 migrants back to their home country in order to remove them from what officials said was riddled with human rights and human trafficking violations. Despite the flights, another 3,000 Ethiopians are estimated to remain in Yemen along the Saudi Arabia border as they arrived in the Arab country in search of new lives with the hope of entering Saudi Arabia to look for work. “IOM's limited funding means that the most vulnerable, including women, children, the elderly and unaccompanied minors, are given priority on the flights back to Ethiopia," the IOM said in detailing the flights. IOM has a migrant response center in Yemen that is designed to house up to 150 people. According to local reports it is providing housing and medical assistance to some 350 of mostly sick and infirm migrants. The flow of refugees and migrants from the Horn of Africa across the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea towards Yemen continues to exceed previous records, with over 63,800 people having made this perilous journey in the first seven months of 2012, the United Nations reported in late August. This marks a 30 percent increase over the number of arrivals during the same period last year, which was 48,700, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “Once data for August is compiled, we expect to see another spike in arrivals in Yemen," a UNHCR spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, told a news conference in Geneva. She said 2011 was also a record year with more than 103,000 arrivals by sea to Yemen, the highest total since 2006 when UNHCR started collecting data on this route. Of particular note is a change in the composition of this population, with more Ethiopians making the crossing using the services of smugglers operating along the shores of Somalia and Djibouti. “Our primary concern is for those fleeing conflict and persecution and who are forced to resort to any available means to reach safety in neighboring countries – in this case, meaning taking boats operated by smugglers," the spokesperson said. Somalis are automatically recognized as refugees in all neighboring countries, including Yemen, owing to conflict and human rights violations in their home country, according to UNHCR. In previous years, Somali refugees have constituted between a quarter and a third of all arrivals to Yemen. From January to July this year, only one in six of those arriving in Yemen were Somali nationals. While the number of Somalis making the crossing remains relatively stable, the number of Ethiopians continues to rise – more than 51,000 this year alone. Some of the Ethiopians who reach Yemen decide to seek asylum, with most citing a lack of prospects and a difficult economic situation back in their homeland, said Fleming. “To avoid detention and deportation, they attempt to evade contact with the Yemeni authorities. Reports of serious abuses of Ethiopians at the hands of smugglers have been increasing," she added. Fleming also noted “disturbing" trends in the way that boat crossings are being carried out. In addition to more daily boat departures to Yemen from Djibouti, the smuggling process has now become so organized that those deciding to make this dangerous journey are using established money transfer systems to pay smugglers rather than carrying cash for fear of being robbed by bandits en route to their departure points.
