The British newspaper The Observer published a report by its correspondent in Ataq, Bethan McKernan, which reveals that thousands of migrants from East Africa, who left in search of a better life, find themselves stranded in Yemen.
Human traffickers are taking advantage of the chaos created by the war that the country has been experiencing for about six years to exploit these migrants, while the European Union, for its part, has tightened its control over migrants trying to reach its territories via Turkey and Libya.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Gulf of Aden has become one of the main routes used by migrants. While the IOM organizes punctual repatriation flights for these migrants, the Ethiopian government refused to receive returnees because of the Covid-19.
Traffickers used their representatives in all regions of Ethiopia and social networks to round up people who wished to move to Saudi Arabia. These people must pay sums of money ranging from AUD 200 to 300. Once paid, they are transferred to Somalia or Djibouti where they are obliged to pay for a 24-hour crossing by boat.
At the end of these dangerous crossings – where the boats carry much more than their real capacity – the migrants are dropped off in southern Yemen where they are met by an interpreter who introduces them to the traffickers. Again, migrants must pay money to travel to the Saudi borders (a thousand kilometers from where they are dropped off). Once there, the smugglers must in turn pay money to the soldiers who control the crossing points and who represent the war factions in Yemen.
Migrants who do not have the money requested must continue the journey alone where they are exposed to blackmail by soldiers and the danger of conflict zones. Scenes of groups of Africans crossing the country to the north became commonplace in Yemen, where human trafficking remains unpunished by the government that manages conflicts in the south.
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