Ethiopian Review

SANA’A, Yemen (Saba) — About 900 Ethiopians have entered Yemen illegally during the first half of December, Interior Ministry has reported.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently announced that more than 74,000 Africans entered Yemen in 2009 with an increase of 50 percent compared with 2008.

Disorders and economic pressures in the African Horn region led to the increase of the number of refugees who pay for smugglers and take a risky sea trip to Yemen, the UNHCR spokesman Andrea said.

The Ethiopian migrants sometimes become a victim of beating, rape, killing or throwing into the sharks-filled seawater, he added.

According to the UN statistics, Ethiopians formed majority of those Africans who moved to Yemen in 2009 instead of Somalis in the previous years despite the continuation of violence in Somalia. The statistics noted that the number of Somalis who reached Yemeni coasts in 2009 is 32800.

The UNHCR made clear that most of those Ethiopians continued their trip to the Gulf countries in search for job opportunities as they did not call reception centers of the UNHCR.