Archives for August 2017

Rights group NRC says closure of Sanaa airport since 2016 has blocked thousands from receiving treatment abroad.

The NRC said at least 20,000 people are needed of life-saving treatment in Yemen [Hani Mohammed/AP Photo]

by Al Jazeera

At least 10,000 people have died in Yemen as a result of the Saudi-led coalition’s restriction on airspace and the closure of Sanaa airport a year ago, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said citing Sanaa’s Ministry of Health.

The rights group joined 14 other aid organisations that called on warring parties in Yemen to reopen the country’s main airport on Wednesday, saying the year-long closure was hindering the flow of aid and preventing thousands of patients from flying abroad for life-saving treatment.

“Denial of access to travel has condemned thousands of Yemenis with survivable illnesses to death,” Mutasim Hamdan, the NRC’s director in Yemen, said in a statement.

“Without access to safe, commercial travel, Yemenis are left with no way to access critical medical care.

“The result is devastating. Thousands of women, men and children who could have been saved lost their lives.”

The coalition, which intervened in the Yemen conflict in 2015 to support the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, controls the airspace over Yemen.

Sanaa International Airport was closed on August 9 last year “leaving many Yemenis with no safe means of transport in or outside of the country”, NRC said.

Citing UN figures, the NRC estimated that 7,000 Yemenis went abroad from Sanaa annually for medical treatment before the conflict.

Now, the number of people needing life-saving healthcare is around 20,000 over the past two years because of the violence, the group added.

‘Journey was too much’

The NRC told the story of Mohammed, whose father, in need of urgent treatment outside of the country, died after travelling for more than 24 hours by road to Seiyun Airport in southern Yemen.

“The doctors said it was dangerous for him to travel all the way there and he might die on the way, but it was our only option,” Mohammed was quoted as saying in the NRC statement.

“We had to pass through many checkpoints, but the journey was too much for my father.”

In addition, another 10,000 people have been killed in violent attacks and more than three million displaced since the conflict began, according to the UN.

The country is also coping with the “world’s worst cholera outbreak” as the heathcare system continues to crumble.

The outbreak has independently claimed the lives of at least 1,800 people and infected more than 370,000 others, according to the World Health Organization.

The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly been accused of blocking aid to Yemen.

Earlier this month, the UN said the coalition obstructed the deliveries of jet fuel to UN planes bringing desperately needed humanitarian aid to rebel-held Sanna.

It also said aid efforts have been hampered by delays and refusals of visa by the Yemeni government and by the rebels controlling the capital.

According to the NRC’s Hamdan, “Yemen’s public services are crumbling under the pressures of war”.

“Hundreds of thousands more people are sick, injured or in need of services, but there are drastically reduced resources to meet them,” he said.

“It is critical that all channels of domestic and international air movement are reopened so Yemenis can get help, and help can get to Yemenis.”

A smuggler forced the mostly Somali and Ethiopian refugees into the sea as they approached Yemen’s coast, says the UN.

The IOM says about 55,000 people have left Horn of Africa nations for Yemen since January [File: Emilio Morenatti/AP]

by Al Jazeera

Up to 50 refugees and migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia were “deliberately drowned” when a smuggler forced them into the sea off Yemen’s coast, the UN migration agency said on Wednesday, calling the drownings “shocking and inhumane”.

International Organization for Migration (IOM) staffers found the shallow graves of 29 of the refugees and migrants on a beach in Yemen’s Shabwa during a routine patrol, the agency’s statement said. The dead were buried by those who survived.

At least 22 people are still missing, the IOM said. The passengers’ average age was 16, the agency said.

The narrow waters between the Horn of Africa and Yemen have been a popular migration route despite Yemen’s ongoing conflict. Refugees and migrants try to make their way to the oil-rich Gulf countries.

The smuggler forced more than 120 people into the sea on Wednesday morning as they approached Yemen’s coast, the IOM statement said.

“The survivors told our colleagues on the beach that the smuggler pushed them to the sea when he saw some ‘authority types’ near the coast,” said Laurent de Boeck, the IOM’s chief of mission in Yemen.

“They also told us that the smuggler has already returned to Somalia to continue his business and pick up more migrants to bring to Yemen on the same route.”

IOM staffers provided aid for 27 survivors who remained on the beach, while others left.

Laurent de Boeck told Al Jazeera that the chaos of Yemen’s war is providing fertile ground for people smugglers.

“It’s absolutely awful, and this is reflected in the real big business which is happening now in Yemen where there is no capacity to actually control the border. We have seen since the war increased smuggling to the country actually,” he said.

“Last year we counted 117,000 people entering the country irregularly – and these are those who have identified,” added de Boeck.

‘False hope of a better future’

De Boeck called the suffering of refugees and migrants on the route enormous, especially during the current windy season in the Indian Ocean. “Too many young people pay smugglers with the false hope of a better future,” he said.

The IOM says about 55,000 people have left Horn of Africa nations for Yemen since January, with most from Somalia and Ethiopia. A third of them are estimated to be women.

Despite the fighting in Yemen, African refugees and migrants continue to arrive in the war-torn country where there is no central authority to prevent them from travelling onward.

The refugees are vulnerable to abuse by armed trafficking rings, many of them believed to be connected to the armed groups involved in the war.

The conflict itself is a deadly risk. In March, Somalia’s government blamed the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen for an attack on a boat that killed at least 42 Somali refugees off Yemen’s coast.

Some Somalis are desperate to avoid years of chaos at home with attacks by homegrown armed group al-Shabab and deadly drought. Some Ethiopians have left home after months of deadly anti-government protests and a 10-month state of emergency.

More than 111,500 refugees and migrants landed on Yemen’s shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.