By Olamilekan FAWAS
The UN migration agency on Wednesday appealed to the international community for 45 million dollars to support movements in both directions between the Horn of African nations and Yemen.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said a Regional Migrant Response Plan (RMRP) for the Horn of Africa and Yemen estimates that about 100,000 new arrivals from the Horn of Africa will reach Yemen in 2018.
The IOM also said that another 200,000 migrants and refugees will return from Saudi Arabia and Yemen to the Horn of Africa countries in the same period.
Jeffrey Labovitz, IOM Regional Director for the East and Horn of Africa, said the plan will guide IOM and its partners in addressing the growing needs of irregular migrants moving between the Horn of Africa and Yemen.
“The humanitarian needs in the region remain immense, which leave migrants and host communities in a vulnerable situation,” he said in a statement issued in Nairobi.
The IOM said the response plan, was developed in coordination with regional and country level non-governmental and intergovernmental partners.
The organisation said the plan, is migrant-focused humanitarian and development strategy for vulnerable migrants from the Horn of Africa, specifically those from Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia, moving to and from Yemen.
The three-year plan that includes urgent humanitarian interventions also details longer term actions to address the drivers of migration, build local migration management capacity and provide sustainable socioeconomic infrastructure to support communities of origin, transit and destination.
According to the IOM, irregular migration from the Horn of Africa to the Gulf countries has been steadily increasing over the past few years, with about 100,000 people entering Yemen, a major transit point on this route, in 2017.
