SANA’A/ADEN — Fleeing the bloodshed and destruction of civil war in Syria, Yosra Mustafa and 15 members of her extended family crossed into Turkey, but found life there too expensive. They tried their luck with Jordan, but were refused entry. Lebanon came to nothing. Never would they have expected to end up in Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, itself riven by insurgency, rebellion by a northern Shiite group and separatist unrest in the south. Poor and desperate, Syrian refugees beg on Yemen’s streets “There is nowhere else to go to now. We’re begging on the streets,” said Mustafa, who, dressed in black from head to toe, stationed herself at one of the Sana’a main thoroughfares hoping cars would slow down to pay her a few Yemeni riyals. Bruno Geddo, UNHCR’s representative in Yemen, says the country already hosts 240,000 refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Iraq. But the scale of the Syrian conflict, which has virtually laid waste to Mustafa’s home town of Aleppo, seems to have prompted people “to run in all directions”. The Syrian civil war has created two million refugees, primarily in the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. With no end in sight after more than two years, those neighbors are increasingly wary conflict could spread to their soil. Many refugees endure hard camp conditions as prospects of a speedy return home fade, eking out a living as best they can. But for some desperate Syrians the cost of living even in those tent cities is too high. Yemen, where nearly half of 25 million inhabitants are either hungry or on the edge of hunger, offers a last hope of sanctuary for a growing number. Mustafa said she and her family paid for their flight to Yemen, where Syrian families do not generally require a visa. “It’s cheaper here. People are kind and honorable,” the elderly woman told Reuters, though she acknowledged beggars from other countries like Somalia occasionally harassed them for encroaching on what they consider their territory. Waheeda, Mustafa’s daughter-in-law, was especially bitter as she recounted how ‘gangs’ had stolen her husband’s car which he used as a taxi to make a living in Aleppo’s Ashrafiyeh district. But everywhere her family flees, it seems, they face a new nightmare. In Sana’a, Waheeda said she feared for her daughters’ well-being, with anecdotes circulating about some Syrians’ desperation driving them to offer girls for marriage at a fraction of what a Yemeni bride’s dowry would traditionally be. “When you’re people living in the shadows, inevitably things may go wrong,” said UNHCR representative Geddo. “We’ve heard about some young Syrian women being married off cheaply and children are not going to school.” UNHCR says there are about 900 registered Syrian refugees in Yemen, the bulk of whom have arrived this year, and settled in the capital Sanaa, followed by the southern hub of Aden. Geddo says there may be as many as 1,600 unregistered refugees, according to a rough estimate compiled by an international non-governmental organization. “There is a fear of insecurity. When people are traumatized they may well fear that if the government found out that they went to another country they may be persecuted,” he said. Geddo said UNHCR was planning a program to encourage unregistered refugees to come forward and seek assistance. The agency can provide identification letters, blankets, kitchen utensils and cash assistance for the most vulnerable, as well as help admitting their children to schools in Yemen. “They do not need to fear being returned to Syria. Yemen is a very generous host country and they will be granted asylum until they need it ... We have to make it clear they have nothing to lose and only to gain by coming forward.” — Reuters saudigazette.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20130928181905
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 00:58:46 +0000
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