Over 100 feared drowned in people smuggling off Yemen, UN agency reports

More than 100 people are feared to have drowned in the past week while attempting to reach Yemen aboard smugglers' boats from Somalia, the latest in a series of similar tragedies that have caused an untold number of deaths in the past few years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported today.

“UNHCR is appalled at this ongoing human tragedy,” the Geneva-based agency said in a statement. “These latest deaths once again highlight the urgent need for a concerted international effort to address the root causes of this growing disaster.

“Amongst the issues that need to be considered are how to deal with smugglers and human traffickers, and developmental needs in countries of origin, as well as how to ensure that people in need of international protection do not have to resort to such desperate measures to receive the help they need,” it added, urging support to help transit countries like Yemen cope with the burden of receiving thousands of people every year.

In the latest incidents, a vessel with 93 Somalis and Ethiopians, including women and children, sank on 3 March in the Gulf of Aden after developing a technical problem, according to witnesses aboard other boats interviewed by UNHCR staff in Yemen. Only the crew of four are thought to have survived.

The boat was one of six that had sailed from Bossasso, in northeastern Somalia, 12 hours earlier. More than 450 passengers on the five other boats were disembarked by the smugglers at the village of Bir Ali in southern Yemen, then intercepted by Yemeni authorities and taken to the nearby Mayfa'a reception centre, where they received medical help and food before being interviewed by UNHCR.

One of the Somalis had been so severely beaten by smugglers that he died of his injuries shortly after reaching shore.

Four days later, the crew of another boat ordered the 85 passengers to jump into the sea some way off the coast. Survivors told UNHCR 17 Somalis and an Ethiopian drowned. Yemeni authorities recovered seven bodies. The 67 survivors who reached shore received emergency UNHCR aid at the Mayfa'a centre, which is now struggling to cope with 535 new arrivals in less than a week. Survivors told UNHCR staff 1,500 people are waiting to be smuggled into Yemen from Bossasso in the coming days.

Every year, thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians fleeing poverty and, in Somalia's case, insecurity, including desperate refugees trying to escape persecution and violence, fall prey to unscrupulous traffickers in the hope of reaching Yemen, from where many seek to make their way into Europe. Over 100 people were feared lost when a smugglers' boat sank in the Gulf of Aden in March 2004. At least 21 others perished in a similar incident in September 2003.

The agency praised Yemen as an exception amongst the Gulf countries in having signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. “Despite its own economic constraints, it has been extremely generous in its handling of migrants and refugees alike,” it said. There are some 47,000 Somalis registered with UNHCR in Yemen, although the authorities estimate that hundreds of thousands more are on their territory.