Oxfam’s is responding to the crisis in northern Yemen. Caroline Berger relays a blog from one of Oxfam’s field staff in Yemen.

I’m standing in the Al Mazarakh camp in Haradh in northern Yemen. It is home to 950 families, or nearly 6,000 people, displaced by the ongoing fighting between Huthi groups and government forces in the region. I have come to this desperate place to provide urgently needed assistance for people who have been uprooted from their homes.

The air is thick with humidity and I can feel the desert sun burning down. It’s nearly 50 degrees. In this inhospitable landscape, there is barely anywhere to shelter and people are desperately seeking a cool place to escape the incessant heat. I ask myself, how are these people surviving?

In the arid plains in which the Al Mazarakh camp sits, Oxfam is working to provide sanitation facilities for families now living some 30 kilometres away from the closest water point. Meanwhile the temperatures continue to rise and families are preparing for another night on the earthen floor.

The conflict in northern Yemen has produced a stream of families fleeing their home villages in and around Sa’ada. In early September, the UN estimated that some 150,000 people were displaced in the region of northern Yemen. But there are thousands more trapped behind the frontlines whose fate is largely unknown.

Today I spoke with a 20-year-old man who is living outside of the camp with a host family. Following Yemeni traditions of hospitality, many families have generously opened up their doors to refugees flooding in from neighbouring cities. He told me that his family fled their home in August when the recent flare-up in fighting first ignited in the northern city of Sa’ada. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to return home. One day he hopes to study but for now he has no choice but to live with his seven family members in two overcrowded rooms.

For these families, home has become a makeshift tent held up by poles driven into the bare earth. UNICEF has set up distribution points inside the camp, where refugees can pick up basic food and 20 litres of water for each person.

I’m shocked and overwhelmed with sadness. Yesterday one 45-year-old man told me how he and his family were forced to flee their village after fighting erupted. They lost everything. Now all 12 of his family members are packed into one tiny room along with their four goats - his only source of livelihood. He has no choice but to live next to his animals - there is no shelter and his goats would die outside in the unforgiving heat.

Dependent on aid, he held his hands up to the sky, and asked me: “How can we live like this?”

Although I have come to help, I had no words to give him.

Oxfam in action: Conflict in Yemen

Tags: Conflict, yemen

This entry was posted by Caroline Berger on October 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm and is filed under General, Humanitarian, News Blog, You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.