GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is seeking clarifications from Yemen over a decision to bar Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees from entering the country, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
The UNHCR also said it was concerned about the fate of 112 Ethiopian refugees believed to have been detained in Yemen over the past two weeks.
Ethiopian refuge-seekers rest on a roadside near the
southern Yemeni village of al-Khabar after they arrived on
a smugglers’ boat from Somalia 29 Sep 2008 – Reuters
The UNHCR said the Yemeni Interior Ministry has announced that Ethiopians and Eritreans would be denied entry to the country, which still grants immediate refugee status to Somalis fleeing their war-torn homeland.
“While recognising the generosity already shown by Yemen to refugees and asylum seekers, we are seeking clarification from the government on any changes in policy,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.
The agency also said that some 87 Ethiopians were known to have been detained in Yemen over the past two weeks, while Yemeni authorities removed a further 25 Ethiopians from a vehicle transporting them to the UNHCR reception centre of Ahwar on Monday.
“We don’t know where they are but fear they were arrested and are being detained somewhere,” UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort told Reuters.
The UNHCR urged Yemen, a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, to maintain access to asylum procedures for all those in need of international protection.
The poor Arab country is struggling to cope with an growing number of asylum seekers smuggled from the Horn of Africa in risk-filled voyages across the Gulf of Aden.
A total of 37,333 people have arrived in Yemen so far this year on smugglers’ boats, and 616 died or were reported missing, according to the UNHCR. The current total is already more than 50 percent higher than in 2007, when 23,000 made it to Yemen.
One thought on “UNHCR asks Yemen to explain Ethiopian entry ban”
I don’t blame the Yemen government for the entry ban, because the Yemen government found out that after all the hundreds and hundreds of Tigrains, most of them Wayane’s undercover, present themselves as Eritreans. The Yemen government knows the Wayane undercover Tigrains are not upto good, and since they lied to be Eritreans, just like what the Egpy did few months ago, the Yemen government wants to do the same thing, once again deport the crooked Wayane back to Eritrea. We all know by now the so called UNHCR careless about the fate of Ethiopians, Somalians….their fake cry is nothing but coverup dirty job on the behalfe of Wayane.