Yemen’s truce is over and people are already crossing the Gulf of Aden. A refugee crisis is starting on the Somali coast, in places already stretched past their limits.
In early September, Ansarullah, the de facto government of most of Yemen, known in the Western Press as “the Houthis”, launched a major offensive against Yemen’s “internationally recognised” government. Ansarullah runs northern Yemen (the most densely populated part of the country). It took Mocha on 10 September and Mayyun (Perim) Island the next day, completing its hold on the Bab al-Mandeb strait. It now holds Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline, and its forces are about twenty kilometres from the African coast.
Shipping has already thinned. Crossings fell to fifteen in a single day, and tankers carried about 5.2 million barrels a day through the strait, down from 8.8 million in June. Ansarullah says the strait stays open and that attacks will only target Saudi vessels, but the “internationally recognised government” says it cannot be trusted. NCF’s Mariam Zeineldin has set out what control of the strait means for Egypt and the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, more than 130,000 people have fled since the start of September, and Taiz (Taiz governorate, Yemen’s most populous region, with nearly 4.5 million people. The flat western coastal region that sits on the Red Sea) accounts for over 60 percent of that.
Thousands so far, and not all of them Yemeni
UNHCR says more than three thousand Yemenis have reached Djibouti, while hundreds have landed in Somaliland and Puntland. Some of those are Somalis who had been living in Yemen and are now returning home.
Somalia is used to returns, though not at this pace. UNHCR says that between 2020 and 2024, more than 10,000 Somali refugees voluntarily returned from countries including Yemen, Kenya, Djibouti and Libya. Those returns were spread over four years and several countries. The September arrivals are unplanned, and they are landing in Puntland and Somaliland, which UNHCR itself lists among areas of ongoing insecurity. Its country page also cites rising tensions with Ethiopia, so the political ground is not stable either.
Djibouti is taking most of the arrivals, and it is struggling. UNHCR’s Djibouti operation is 15 percent funded, and its operations inside Yemen are 18 percent funded.
The first boats are not the last
This has the elements to become a bigger refugee crisis. Hundreds is where this starts, not where it ends. Two things could get it there. The first is the sea. As winds and waves ease, more boats could make the journey. The second is the people who have not left. UNHCR reports that thousands more are stranded inside Yemen by insecurity and fuel shortages. The “Houthi” Government of North Yemen’s continued detention of 73 UN staff members does not help the aid response on the Yemeni side.
We have seen this before and know how fast this can move. In 2015, 2,601 people arrived in Bossaso from Mukalla in a single day, the largest single arrival in Somalia since that war began. By mid-June 2015, Oxfam had counted 14,457 arrivals in Somalia from Yemen. By the end of June, the ICRC put the total at close to 19,000, with roughly 13,000 in Bossaso alone. That year, the burden of assisting those fleeing fell largely on local communities, because Somaliland’s government lacked the capacity to cope.
On Somalia and Somaliland
The people arriving now are landing in a country already full of displaced people. Somalia has 3.3 million internally displaced people, the drought has displaced more than 500,000 more, and about 4.8 million people need humanitarian aid. Newcomers do not join a queue. They join people who are already in it.
Returnees are the group most likely to fall through. They are citizens, so they sit awkwardly inside a refugee response. Some have never lived in Somalia. On 30 September the government repatriated 160 Somalis from Yemen, including 59 women and children, some of whom were born there and are seeing Somalia for the first time. They need housing, schooling and work, not just a boat ride home.
The money is thin. Somalia’s 2026 humanitarian plan has received only 15 percent of the US$852 million it asked for, and the World Food Programme has cut emergency food assistance for over two million people to just over 600,000. The plan’s refugee, asylum-seeker and returnee component targets 53,110 people. That target was set before the September offensive.
Somaliland receives arrivals through Berbera and has done so before. It is not internationally recognised, which limits what donors and agencies will route through it. Arguably that is where the gap is most likely to open. Hargeisa can offer hospitality. It cannot offer a budget line.
What should happen?
The window is short. If calm seas arrive in mid-October, reception capacity needs funding now, not after larger amounts of refugees make the crisis unmanageable. The 2015 figures show the numbers will not wait.
Donors should fund the Djibouti and Somalia refugee response while it is still a small appeal. Agencies should plan reintegration support for Somali returnees, who should not be treated as a secondary caseload. And Somaliland’s role should be written into the response plan instead of left to local goodwill.
Ansarullah’s offensive was about a shipping lane. Its human cost is arriving on a coastline with no room left to absorb it.
