Yemen is overwhelmed with African refugees

Judy just told you about Israel being overwhelmed with African refugees and then tonight I’m reading about Somalis and Ethiopians flooding into Yemen.   According to this Reuters article, 30,000 African (mostly Muslim) illegal immigrants have swarmed across the Red Sea to Yemen this year alone in hopes of getting to Saudi Arabia or the West.  

The United Nations has set up camps and many go there in hopes of a ticket out.

Many Africans consider Yemen a gateway to other parts of the Middle East and the West. It shares a border with oil-producing Saudi Arabia, which hosts millions of foreign workers.

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But some Africans find their odyssey ends here, in lives half-lived because Yemen is itself too poor to offer a better future.

Others like this 23 year old mother of SEVEN disperse into slum neighborhoods.

“I couldn’t stand camp life,” said a woman in a black scarf with orange flowers who gave her name as Fawzia. The 23-year-old has seven children and a runaway husband. She survives on casual domestic work, but has failed to pay her rent for six months.

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“I hate myself, I hate my children, I have no future,” she said vacantly. Beside her, a baby lay untended in its own vomit on the grubby blue carpet of her trash-filled shack.

Here is a post I wrote back in January on Africans headed north through Libya.

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