Pregnant women only days from delivering have fled the fighting on Yemen's west coast, crossed the Red Sea in overcrowded boats and arrived at a refugee camp in Djibouti, driven by desperation and fear.
After arriving in the towns of Obock, Khor Angar, Moulhoule or Godoria, some of them gave birth in the country. Most of the 3,100 Yemeni refugees are women and children, Unicef's representative in Djibouti, Ramatou Toure, told The National.
“This means we are dealing with the most vulnerable part of the population,” Ms Toure said. She said the movement of refugees to Djibouti may be the biggest from Yemen since the civil war began in 2014.
“This was a surprise, it took us by storm,” she said. “First it was small numbers, around 50 a day. Then 1,000 people crossed on September 13,” she said. That was two days after the Houthis captured the entire west coast in an offensive that gave them unprecedented access to the Red Sea.
Yemeni refugees arrive in Djibouti by boat, exhausted and dehydrated. They are immediately given food and water, but sometimes their needs are more complicated. Before the latest escalation, an estimated 2.2 million Yemeni children under the age of five were acutely malnourished.
This mean that once in Djibouti many of them require urgent medical assistance. Some mothers have to make a choice between taking one child to the hospital and leaving three behind, or staying in the camp with all four, Ms Toure said.
To deal with these situations Unicef provides staff to make sure children are taken care of when needed, if the mother is unable to.
“There are lots of parameters that need to be taken into account,” when it comes to dealing with the most vulnerable, Mr Toure said. According to aid groups, the sheer number of displaced people has forced some to sleep in the open, and led to scuffles over water and other provisions.
Yemen is no stranger to mass displacement. War has plagued the country since at least 2014, when the Houthis took over the capital Sanaa and a Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the government. There were already four million internally displaced people before the latest fighting, some of whom have been forced to move several times over the past 12 years.
Continuing clashes between the Iran-backed rebels and anti-Houthi forces have caused an additional 100,000 people to flee their homes in Yemen. In Taiz alone, on the west coast, 94,000 people have fled the fighting, marking a 135 per cent increase in displacement since September 8, latest UN figures show.
More are expected to continue to seek refuge in Djibouti. So far, the government has been leading on the humanitarian response, with UN agencies and other international NGOs providing assistance where needed. But soon the system will no longer be able to keep up.
“The country needs help. We're expecting many more. We are planning for 10,000 people in the next few months,” Ms Toure said.
Unicef has launched an appeal for $2.7 million that it anticipates will be required to meet imminent needs for the next three months. With only 20 per cent of support for Yemen's 2026 response plans met, the crisis is already chronically underfunded and largely overshadowed by newer conflicts in the region, and is often referred to as one of the most neglected crisis in the world.
