Boat tragedy survivors return home

In early January a migrant boat left the northern coast of Somalia bound for Yemen. It carried 106 Ethiopian and Somali migrants who had trekked across large swathes of remote land on foot and by truck to reach the point of embarkation.

The boat was part of the large-scale smuggling business that facilitates the irregular migration of thousands of migrants to Yemen from the Horn of Africa each year. Over 90,000 migrants arrived in Yemen in 2015, and almost 90 per cent of them were from Ethiopia.

Soon after it left the shore, the boat developed mechanical problems and was unable to make the 10-hour crossing to Yemen. It drifted at sea for a week, before capsizing in rough seas off the coast of Somaliland, the autonomous region of northern Somalia.

Thirty-six migrants drowned on 8 January 2016, adding to the total of 95 others known to have died in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in 2015.

IOM’s office in Hargeisa, Somaliland, worked closely with government authorities to assist the survivors with emergency assistance, medical care and transportation. They were transferred by road to Berbera, and then to Hargeisa where they were accommodated at the Ethiopian Community Center.

On January 26th, 64 of the survivors opted to return home to Ethiopia with IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return programme.  They travelled by road back to Jijiga, Ethiopia and then on to their final destinations.

Hassan, 28, told IOM: “I am going back to Ethiopia to look for work and to see my family and five children. I will tell everyone not to try irregular migration to the Gulf.”

The operation was funded by the US State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM).

In a related report, IOM estimates that 55,528 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to enter Europe during the first 28 days of 2016 –  a rate of nearly 2,000 per day. The daily average is nearly equivalent to the total numbers for the month of January as recently as two years ago.

During the same period IOM has recorded some 244 deaths at sea, as well as at least a dozen more deaths of migrants and refugees who died either after reaching Europe or travelling to a launch point in Turkey. By comparison, total deaths on Mediterranean Sea routes were 12 in 2014 and 82 last year.

IOM believes more victims are missing.

According to IOM staff in Samos, who were asked by the authorities to assist with translation, 65 migrants were squeezed into a wooden boat designed to carry at most 30 people. The boat departed Turkey at press time and began taking on water almost immediately. It sank 24 hours later off Samos. All victims and survivors reportedly were Kurds from Iraq.  

The 218 deaths on the so-called Eastern Mediterranean route linking Turkey to Greece through the first four weeks of January 2016 are almost four times those recorded on that route last year through mid-August. During the whole of 2015, some 805 migrants and refugees perished in these waters.

Despite winter weather conditions and the strong winds of the last few days, an estimated 52,055 migrants and refugees have arrived in the Greek islands since the beginning of the year. This is close to the total recorded in the relatively “safe” month of July 2015, when warm weather and calm seas allowed 54,899 to make the journey.

IOM earlier reported that a survey of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece revealed that 90% were from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, which would allow them to leave Greece and enter the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) en route to Western Europe as asylum seekers.  But the Idomeni border crossing from Greece to FYROM remained closed at press time. FYROM officials blamed congestion at the country’s border with Serbia.