BEIRUT: Djibouti, a nation of about 1.2 million people at the southern end of the Red Sea, cannot on its own absorb the wave of Yemenis arriving there as they flee the conflict in their own country, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of migrants who already pass through its desert each year, the UN’s top official in the African country warned on Wednesday.
Jose Barahona, the UN resident coordinator in Djibouti, said close to 4,000 refugees had crossed the Bab Al-Mandab strait from Yemen in the space of a week. Most of them arrived in or near Obock, a remote fishing town of about 20,000 people in the north of the country, in a region already struggling with drought and shortages of food.
“It is becoming a perfect storm in this part of Djibouti,” Barahona told reporters via video link. “We are all trying to support, but we really need to mobilize the solidarity of the international community.”
More than half of the new arrivals from Yemen were children and the majority of the others were women, he said. Most came from Mokha and its surrounding areas, he told Arab News.
“The trigger was when the conflict in Yemen extended to the port of Mokha,” he added. “A few days later, we started receiving this arrival of refugees.”
The exodus followed the seizure by the Houthis in September of the Red Sea port city of Mokha, after which they overran Yemen’s southwestern coast and islands in and around Bab Al-Mandab strait.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration has said renewed fighting between Houthi and Yemeni government forces in recent weeks had displaced more than 200,000 people, up from an estimate of 82,000 in early September. UN agencies and Djibouti’s government issued an appeal for national and international assistance on Sept. 17 as the number of people arriving increased.
Barahona said arrival numbers soared from about 20 to nearly 3,800 in the space of four days during the first week of the escalation in Yemen, about a month ago, and have subsequently slowed to a trickle. The newcomers joined about 35,000 long-term refugees from neighboring countries who were already in Djibouti.
The UN appeal for funding for its humanitarian response to the crisis has a target of about $7 million, of which only $2.8 million has been fulfilled, Barahona said, warning that shrinking global aid budgets were already biting.
“Globally, funding for development and humanitarian assistance is decreasing, and we have seen that decrease in the assistance to migrants and refugees in Djibouti,” he told Arab News.
“There is a limit to how much the state of Djibouti, with its positive willingness, can provide. The whole country is 1 million people, and it is still a developing country. That’s where I think, as the international community, we should stand side by side with the government of Djibouti.”
The pressure on Obock is compounded by its location on one of the busiest irregular migration routes in the world. Between 250,000 and 300,000 migrants, mostly from rural Ethiopia, pass through the town each year hoping to cross the sea to Yemen and reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in search of work, Barahona said. About 20 percent of that number flows in the opposite direction. But with crossings into Yemen now much harder to arrange, many migrants are stuck.
“We have more and more people trapped in Djibouti and trapped in Obock,” Barahona said, describing scenes of migrants who arrive “with just a bottle of water and very little else.”
For those who are able to attempt a sea crossing, it remains a potentially deadly journey; 139 bodies were recovered and 84 people were still missing after an overloaded boat carrying more than 300 people sank in the Red Sea last week, Barahona said. Others die of dehydration attempting to cross the desert on foot.
Meanwhile, the failure of the short rainy season this year has left 25 percent of Obock’s host communities at crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, he added, and UN agencies were working “as one” under the coordination of local officials to address the crisis.
The UN Refugee Agency is helping authorities register new arrivals, the International Organization for Migration is serving 1,500 hot meals twice a day and running a migrant center that arranges voluntary returns to Ethiopia, UNICEF is helping to shore up water systems, and the World Food Programme is distributing food.
Barahona praised Djibouti for its refugee laws, which he described as being among the most generous in the world, granting freedom of movement, the right to work formally, and access to healthcare and education. But he warned that the stability of the country, in a region surrounded by conflict, should not be taken for granted.
“I think it’s expecting too much of Djibouti, which is really doing its homework in the Horn of Africa, that Djibouti alone can handle all this movement of people without an impact on its own budget and its own development path,” he said.
“The Horn of Africa continues to need at least one country, one spot, that can remain peaceful and stable, as Djibouti has been so far.”
This stability, he said, “is not by miracle; it is the result of a lot of work and very wise decisions across the years,” including the enduring authority of traditional leaders who continue to settle disputes over land and cattle by consensus.
The country also hosts US and Chinese military bases just 12 kilometers apart, while maintaining good relations with each nation.
“Djibouti doesn’t have oil, doesn’t have gas, but it has a lot of wise decisions and a very strategic position,” Barahona said.