Tue 25 May 2021:
The coronavirus pandemic and related border restrictions severely affected over 300,000 migrants across the East and Horn of Africa last year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
The UN agency draws on its fresh annual report on migration trends and population movements in the region that highlights how the pandemic deteriorated the already extremely harsh conditions faced by vulnerable migrants, including asylum-seekers, unaccompanied minors and stranded migrants, among others.
“The widespread air, land, and sea border closures, and other movement restrictions put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19, have severely impacted more than 300,000 people [across the East and Horn of Africa] who largely depend on informal employment and the ability to move across borders for work and their survival,” the IOM said.
“Thousands of migrants, mostly Ethiopian, are stranded in Djibouti, Somalia and Yemen, unable to continue their journey to reach Saudi Arabia via Yemen … The extremely harsh conditions faced by migrants, exacerbated by the pandemic, also resulted in high numbers of people returning spontaneously from Yemen to Djibouti and Somalia.
IOM estimates at least 32,000 migrants remain stranded in Yemen,” the press release read.
Describing dire consequences of the pandemic for these people, the IOM said that hundreds of thousands migrants have been left without access to food, water, security and medical care, as well as coronavirus vaccines, noting that medical equipment, including face masks, are in short supply.
“The region continues to be home to many of the world’s protracted displacement contexts, economic crises, conflicts and climate shocks … Combined with the impact of COVID-19, these factors contributed to a rise in the number of IDPs in the East and Horn of Africa, reaching 6.5 million in December 2020 compared to 6.3 million in 2019,” the UN agency added.
According to the IOM report, while the main causes of mass migration in the region poverty, conflict and environmental events persist, economic factors driving people out of the continent have been further exacerbated by the pandemic.
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