More than 3,400 people fleeing renewed fighting in Yemen have landed along Djibouti’s northern coast, according to Djiboutian authorities.
The figure was reported by Djibouti’s state news agency on Sunday. It covers just 48 hours of arrivals, part of a surge that Djiboutian officials say began the previous weekend.
Recommended Stories
list of 2 itemsend of list
The crossings followed a Houthi offensive in which the group, which controls much of northern Yemen, seized the Red Sea port of Mocha and advanced along the coast towards the narrow strait separating Yemen from Djibouti.
Djibouti has fewer than 1.2 million people and limited resources. The arrival of thousands of people within days is putting further strain on already stretched services, officials have warned.
Footage aired on Djibouti’s state broadcaster RTD showed wooden dhows and larger vessels arriving near the town of Obock, crowded with women in black robes and children wearing life jackets.
Obock lies on Djibouti’s northern coast, close to the narrowest stretch of the Bab al-Mandeb between the Horn of Africa and Yemen. The area is near a departure point for refugees making the journey in the opposite direction, through Yemen towards the Gulf.
Those coming ashore could be seen carrying the belongings they had with them, including sacks of clothing, water containers, food and other personal items. In footage filmed after dark, soldiers unloaded the boats under floodlights.
People have arrived on “all kinds of sea vessels, from small dhows to larger ships”, Alexandre Coissac, who heads the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told Al Jazeera. One vessel alone carried hundreds of people recently, he said.
The journey has also become increasingly difficult, Coissac said, with some families stranded on the Yemeni side due to fuel shortages.
UNICEF said children making the crossing were exposed to extreme heat, dehydration and a lack of safe drinking water.
The IOM said on Sunday that fighting had driven residents out of entire districts in Yemen, including Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi. It put the wider displacement inside Yemen at more than 85,000 people, most of it in just the first two weeks of September.
After Houthi forces seized the strategic Yemeni island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, in the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Djibouti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on September 11 it was following developments there “with increased attention”, while backing efforts to ease tensions and reach a political solution in Yemen.
Djibouti’s Finance Minister Ilyas Dawaleh documented the accelerating arrivals in a series of posts on X, reporting about 500 people by September 11, 1,400 the following day and more than 2,000 by that evening.
By September 13, he wrote that the pace was becoming “increasingly difficult for our country”.
As arrivals increased, Djibouti’s coastguard, navy, army and health services were deployed to rescue people stranded at sea and receive them ashore, providing food and first aid at sites including Obock and the smaller coastal post of Khor Angar.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed travelled to Obock to meet officials from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme and the IOM.
Djiboutian authorities said they were preparing to receive as many as 10,000 people if the pace continued.
The pressure on Djibouti also has implications beyond the humanitarian response. The Bab al-Mandeb is one of the world’s most important shipping corridors, with an estimated one in eight tonnes of global seaborne trade passing through it each day.
Djibouti’s location has also made it a hub for foreign militaries. The United States, China, France, Japan and Italy all operate bases in the country, several within a few miles of one another, in part because of the importance of protecting shipping through the increasingly contested waterway.
“Djibouti, like many countries, depends heavily on international trade and the safety and security of sea lanes,” said Aden Omar Abdillahi, director of the Djibouti-based Institute of Political and Strategic Studies.
“If this conflict impacts maritime security in the way some fear, it will have a massive impact.”
Djibouti has spent two decades building its role as a stable base for foreign governments and shipping interests in an unstable region. The latest crisis puts further pressure on that role as instability around the Red Sea deepens.
In a separate post on X, Dawaleh warned that the US-Israel war on Iran, which has disrupted traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz waterway, is already deepening uncertainty for smaller economies such as Djibouti’s.
In 2015, more than 15,700 Yemenis arrived after the war escalated, according to IOM and Djiboutian government figures.
“We’ve received refugees for decades from across the region,” Abdillahi said.
“When it comes to Yemen, many people settled here during the first big phase of the fighting in 2015, and we’ve got experience managing this. Yemenis are also not distant foreigners; there are Yemeni communities who have been here for centuries.”
Djibouti already hosts more than 36,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers, according to UNHCR’s March figures. Most are from Somalia, Ethiopia and Yemen.
The Markazi camp near Obock, which received thousands of Yemenis during the earlier exodus a decade ago, is again being used to accommodate new arrivals.
“It is at this site that we’re trying to organise and that the authorities are trying to organise all the support in terms of housing, shelter and meals,” IOM’s Coissac told Al Jazeera.
He added that many of the latest arrivals were being accommodated there, while others had been taken in by residents of Obock. “The generosity of the Obock population has been huge,” Coissac said.
In a post on X on September 12, Dawaleh wrote that the UNHCR and other UN agencies on the ground “appear to be lacking resources to receive and protect these vulnerable people with dignity”, and urged the international community to “stand with us urgently”.
A person familiar with the humanitarian response in the region said authorities in Puntland and Somaliland, two self-governing regions of Somalia across the Gulf of Aden, had already asked UN agencies for help preparing for larger numbers.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.
Both regions could see arrivals at their own port towns, Bosaso and Berbera, if the exodus continues.
The preparations come as humanitarian organisations are already facing deep funding pressures following sharp reductions in aid from the United States and, more recently, the United Kingdom.
Coissac said many of those arriving were likely to remain in Djibouti rather than move on quickly. “The number of people arriving is large,” he said, “and if it continues at this rate, we’ll not be able to manage”.
