The status of refugees world-wide is a heart breaking story. Millions of people are separated from their homes, families and their native lands. Almost 22,376,300 people are recognized as refugees, with 7,458,500 in Asia, 7,385,100 in Africa, 6,056,500 in Europe, and 1,294,900 in North America. The rest are scattered in smaller numbers in Latin America and Oceania. Yemen too has its share of this problem. It hosts about 42,956 registered refugees and many on the loose unregistered.

Why Yemen?
Our shoreline is one open stretch. There are no coastal patrol boats and no coastal garrison are available. The absence of the navy encourages the inflow of unregistered illegal aliens into the country.
In addition, our refugee problem is precipitated by geography. Yemen is situated facing the Horn of Africa, which is going through a very difficult time. There is a civil war in Somalia. There is tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is a long standing civil war in Southern Sudan.

The glitter of the oil-rich Arab Gulf countries also serves as a pull factor. Yemen becomes a stepping stone for individuals looking for better economic fortunes from as far as Tanzania and Zambia.

Finally, the humanitarian open-door policy of the government has added fuel to the problem. plus the better economical conditions in Yemen and the presence of UNHCR, all these made Yemen a very attractive place for refugees, to them it is a paradise and a land of opportunities and security.

A clash and a conflict
The In-flux of refugees from Africa to our country because of civil wars there, have a double effect on different aspects of our lives. We look at it from a humanitarian point of view, we fell it is our duty to help them, but how can we help them when we need help? and for how long?.
We should look at it from other angles as well such as social and economical. This in-flux of refuges to Yemen had created a social clash, Yemen was and still is a conservative society many of the refugees are coming from a more or less liberal societies with different ideologies and believes and not knowing much about Yemeni society and its system. These lack of understanding leads to an undesirable and unfavorable misconception causing a social clash between the two societies.

Economically speaking this in-flux increased the lineaments of poverty and its consequences, many of these people come to Yemen looking for jobs believing that Yemen is a better place to start a living or , UNHCR trains these refugees so they can go out of their camps and earn their bread, which lessens the responsibilities of the UNHCR and increases the problems of the country, Yemen is a labour exporting country, we have thousands of unemployed people, the government is not able to create new job opportunities, which means an enormous competition specially in the private foreign companies and service sectors, refugees with their survival instincts are ready to take up any kind of work accepting minimum wages, as a result Yemenis are left jobless on the roads, let alone the spread of diseases which are difficult to control for lake of medical technologies and insufficient financial backing as our officials always like to put it.

What the locals feel?!
Many young people feel that this problem is not going to be solved in the near future, they feel that they will be the ones to pay the price of this immeasurable crisis
"It is our responsibility to help them, as our culture and religion makes it obligatory to help people in need, but at the same time we should not suffer because of this and we should not be depraved of our chances in getting jobs". Said Mr. Murad( A young unemployed Yemeni).



Mr. Anoushiravan Daneshvar - UNHCR Representative in Yemen feels that refugees help in a way by reducing the labour cost and bring skills to the country. Mr. Fuad(a computer professional) does not agree with the Rep he says " It is true that they reduce the labour cost, but who is going to benefit from that? Only the businessmen a small part of the community, where the larger part the labour class suffers unavailability and uncertainty of finding gobs to earn their daily bread".

''We too suffer'' Says the refugees.
"The quality of food provided in the camps are below the standards, we can't live on such food in addition to that we don't get enough clothing, in winter it gets quite cold in the camp you can see small children shivering, so we as bread winners go out to work to help improve the situation" explained Mr. Mahmood J.
" We don't want a special treatment all we want is to be treated like human beings. I don't want to compare our conditions here with the ones in other countries e.g.; UK. It is going to be a shock to you". said Mr. Timir.

On asking the UNHCR Representative to clarify the above allegations Mr. Anoushiravan Explained: "The basic policy we follow as for our assistance for refugees is that we should not increase the standard of our services to refugees more than the existing local standards, because that will create tension between the refugees and the locals, because they will look at refugees as a privileged people and the local population living next door not receiving anything so we try to maintain the local standards".
The question is, Is the food provided to refugees really match the local standards?

Accompany us
the refugees problem is a big one, their number is on the increase every day specially during the period from September - April of every year because of the suitable sea condition. A notable number of these people are young guys between the age group 18 - 30 they are here looking for a better living, a job that can improve there life-styles. The locals feel that they are paying the price of these civil wars in the horn of Africa, the also feel that the International community is not doing enough to solve this problem and they all are of the opinion "If you can not stop a misery try to prevent another one from happening".

By: Hatem Bamehriz.
Yemen Times

 

Yemen's tourist industry was recently badly hit by a series of unfortunate incidents. Kidnapping, terrorism and other forms of violence have driven away the visitors.
The sad part in all of this is that Yemen offers many attractions, or what is called 'treasures' Mr. Jose Zoreda, Chief Executive Officer of the Business Council of the World Tourism Organization (WTO).
Mr. Zoreda visited Yemen twice over the last few weeks. On his second visit, Hatem Ba-Mehriz of the Yemen Times talked to him and filed the following interview.

Q: Could you tell us about the WTO?
A: The WTO is an International organization founded by 130 countries which are represented in it. That is the government side. It also has another side which brings representatives of over 400 of the most important companies in the world dealing with tourism and International Association and organizations and major Airlines. The basic

Q: Is tourism a real profitable business?
A: Not many people know that tourism is the biggest job provider industry and in most cases an average of about 10% of the gross national product in over all comes from tourism, in some countries they exceeded that figure and in some it was smaller, but in average tourism is a 10% of the gross national product in major number of countries.

Q: How do you measure up Yemen with other destinations?
A: I don't have the figures of the tourists arrival in Yemen, although I have heard that you still are working on a reliable manner how to measure the statistics of the number of tourist arrivals. In terms of the product I can say Yemen can be categorized within the countries that provide a mixture of everything, in other words if we agree that tourism is a way of satisfying emotion, I would say Yemen has all the ingredients for satisfying people interested in culture, those interested in adventures and people interested in contact with people in short Yemen has a lot of potentials, but honestly speaking it needs to improve its product. The cultural heritage that you have is astonishing but also in a very poor conditions, that is the question of bringing together the local communities more into the picture that tourism can be an important source of income for them complementary or substitutely.

Q: What do you think are the problems the Yemeni tourism market faces?
A: A purpose of the council is to bring together the private sector with the public sector in order to make tourism a better recognized industry among society and among other governmental authorities which in some cases lacks understanding of the importance of tourism as one of the major and fundamental sector to encourage development and prosperity.

Q: Is this your first visit to Yemen?
A: Yes, this is my first visit to Yemen. I am on a completely private visit. I came with my wife for a pure tourism purposes, I had heard a lot about Yemen from friends who had come here. My wife is a Historian and we both are very ken in cultural oriented travel trips and Yemen was our missing country to come, I must say that we have enjoyed your beautiful villages, houses and the beautiful small towns and we think Yemen is a country that deserve much more attention in terms of tourism attraction and has an enormous potential if the authorities and the private sector here believe in tourism and put all the efforts so that tourism becomes everyday a more important sector, Yemen has all the ingredients in order to become a very highly successful tourist country if they want so.

Q: Do you have any specific comments?
A: When I was in Shibam (Hadarmut) which is one of the wonders of your country I was touched by it, but at the same time it was extremely dirty. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen but I must also say it is one of the most dirtiest places I have seen, it is a pity such a wonder is not a little bit more taken care of in a hygienic and cleanliness aspect, which is not very difficult if the local community is educated little by little that a lot more of income could come if we could provide a more appealing environment, where the tourist not only goes quickly and goes back but stays there have a coffee or eat in a nice clean small place with no plastic bags of rubbish all over the town, tourist would have stayed and consumed more and people will see that their income is increasing little by little, imagine I wanted to have a cola but there was no way. Another problem is Visas problem for example take my own case I came here and from here we went for a week to Ethiopia and we came back for a couple of days more I had to organize two visas, this is not going to help in encouraging tourism to come back and spend more days. All countries are competing with each other, the concept of distance is demolishing the cost of air transport is gone down and Yemen is competing with other countries which may offer the same product, therefor you have to improve the competitivity of your product. Kidnapping is a very unfavorable issue for the development of tourism, any action that threaten the safety and security of tourism is a very negative threat e.g.; last year the killing of tourists in Egypt had made it loss half a million tourists. Yemen must eliminate these kind of activities in order to have more tourist coming to this beautiful country. I am sure that Yemen is going to suffer in the coming few months of major cancellations because of what had happened. Yemeni government and the Yemeni private sector most believe in tourism.