Syrians Add to Yemen Refugee Crisis
As with a previous wave of refugees that fled from Syria to Yemen during former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's reign in the 1980s, Syrian refugees arriving there today find political, economic and security instability.
SANAA, Yemen — A new scene has been filling the streets of Sanaa for the past few months, one that is unexpected and oft misunderstood by the local population: Dozens of Syrian refugees are scattered around many of the city’s streets.
The majority of their beautiful women and girls are begging for money and food. Sanaa, a city teeming with impoverished individuals, refugees and Africans, has recently taken in Syrian refugees amid a situation that does not seem very promising. They seem to be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, as the old saying goes.
There are close to 2 million foreign refugees living in Yemen, according to statements made by Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Most of them come from Somalia and Ethiopia and only 250,000 of them are officially registered as refugees. In 2012, about 107,000 refugees flowed into Yemen, while from January to May 2013, 29,000 arrived, according to the Unite Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Yemen.
The last waves of refugees to Yemen came from Syria; however, these are in relatively small numbers compared with those from the Horn of Africa. There are only 600 Syrians registered as refugees according to the UNHCR, with 315 Syrian families having entered Yemen recently by way of Turkey or Egypt. Yemeni sources, however, say that the number of Syrian families [arriving as refugees] is actually in the thousands.
