Yemeni NGO to receive Nansen Refugee Award for life-saving work

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Yemeni NGO to receive Nansen Refugee Award for life-saving work

The Society for Humanitarian Solidarity has won this year's Nansen Refugee Award for its tireless work with boat arrivals along Yemen's coast.

By UNHCR - Communications Group

13 September 2011

The Society for Humanitarian Solidarity patrols 600 km of the Yemeni coast to help boat arrivals on the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

GENEVA, September 13 (UNHCR) - The UN refugee agency announced today that its annual Nansen Refugee Award will honour a Yemen-based non-governmental organization, the Society for Humanitarian Solidarity (SHS), for its life-saving work with refugees and migrants who make the treacherous sea journey to Yemen.

Every year thousands of refugees and migrants, desperate to escape violence, drought and poverty in the Horn of Africa, put their lives in the hands of human smugglers and cross the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in crowded and often unseaworthy boats. Some are beaten or abused, arriving traumatized and ill on the Yemeni coast.

So far in 2011, more than 60,000 people have made sea crossings to Yemen - as many as the combined number of arrivals in the last three years. It is estimated that at least 120 people drowned trying to make the journey this year.

SHS was founded by Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy in 1995 to help people arriving by boat from Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa, as well as the impoverished local communities that hosted them. While the number of arrivals was low in the initial years, it has risen sharply 16 years later. In recent weeks, daily arrivals have averaged more than 300 people.

Today, SHS staff work around the clock to monitor about a third of Yemen's 2,000 kilometre-long coastline, pick up survivors, provide emergency care and, all too often, bury those who die en route.

"Thousands of refugees owe their survival to the people working for the Society for Humanitarian Solidarity," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, announcing the recipient of the Nansen Refugee Award in Geneva on Tuesday. "Their complete dedication to the service of mankind deserves this global recognition and support."

SHS founder Al-Hamairy, who is being honoured together with his staff of 290, said, "Winning the Nansen Award has given us a big boost. Our work is a humanitarian duty… that has to be done under any circumstance." He added that he would use the Nansen platform to call on the international community to "intensify efforts to improve the situation in Somalia to help dissuade people from attempting the risky crossing."

The Nansen Refugee Award is given annually to an individual or organization for outstanding work on behalf of refugees. It includes a $100,000 prize that the winner can donate to a cause of his or her choice. It was created in 1954 in honour of Fritdjof Nansen, a Norwegian, scientist, explorer and statesman and the first League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Previous winners include British photojournalist Alixandra Fazzina, US Senator Edward Kennedy, Japanese optometrist Akio Kanai and Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

This year's Nansen Award Ceremony will take place in Geneva on October 3.

Given to individuals or organizations for outstanding service in the cause of refugees.

One of a group of 38 newly-arrived refugees and migrants on a beach close to Hosaisha, Yemen.

A UNHCR truck transports new arrivals from Hosaisha to a reception centre where they will be registered and given food, water and medicine.

New arrivals inside the truck on their way to the reception centre.

Run by the UNHCR, the Mayfa'a reception centre is the first place the refugees get food and shelter after the dangerous journey across the Gulf of Aden.

A group of Somali refugees, who arrived in Yemen a couple of days ago, decide to walk from the Ahwar reception centre through the desert all the way to Aden. They prefer trying to make it on their own in Aden to living in a refugee camp.

Bottles, clothing and other items left behind by migrants and refugees outside Ahwar reception centre.

A UNHCR truck makes several stops along the coastal road to pick up new arrivals.

Somali refugees buy and sell fish in a small market in Kharaz refugee camp.

New arrivals in Kharaz refugee camp are given tents when they first arrive. If they stay longer, they are allocated a simple brick house inside the camp.

The walk to Aden takes several days. The desert heat is extreme, and often, travellers walk without any belongings and with insufficient drinking water.

In Aden, refugees and migrants end up in the poorest neighbourhoods, often with several family members living in a small room. There are not many jobs because of the high unemployment rate in Yemen.

Clothes belonging to migrants and refugees dry in the sun.

Somali refugees and migrants cross from Somaliland into the no-man's land between Somaliland and Djibouti.

Staff from UNHCR and the Djibouti Refugee Commission talk with an exhausted Ethiopian man, who has travelled for days and gone without food or water in order to get to Djibouti.

Marines patrol the Djibouti coast in an attempt to catch smugglers transporting refugees and migrants across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen.

Two Yemeni smugglers caught and detained by marines as they were leaving the Djibouti coast on a boat loaded with refugees and migrants heading for Yemen.

The entrance to the detention centre in the port of Obock. Once a jail, it houses Somalis and Ethiopians caught entering Djibouti before transfer.

Somali and Ethiopian refugees and migrants wait in a room in the Obock detention centre.

Detained Somalis and Ethiopians prepare a meal at the Obock detention centre.

Migrants and refugees sit outside at the Obock detention centre, which was built to hold 20 detainees but now holds more than 200 people.

A Somali family from Mogadishu wait outside the Djibouti Refugee Agency office, seeking to register as asylum seekers.

Somalis and Ethiopians crowd outside the Djibouti Refugee Agency office in the capital, Djibouti.

In Djibouti city, large numbers of refugees jam offices of the government department charged with the registration of asylum seekers.

A group of women wait outside the Djibouti Refugee Agency office to register as asylum seekers. The wait could take days. Once registered, they are transferred to Ali Adeh, where UNHCR provides assistance.

Refugees and migrants, including a baby, are picked up at a security post in the fishing village of Broom, Yemen by a UNHCR truck that will bring them to the Mayfa'a reception centre.

After making the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden, new arrivals are checked by a doctor at the Ahwar reception centre in Yemen.

New arrivals at the Ahwar reception centre in Yemen. A surge in arrivals in 2008 was largely due to the conflict in Somalia and the use of new smuggling routes from Somalia to Yemen and from Djibouti.

Women and children from a nearby camp for displaced people search a windswept beach near Bossaso for scraps of charcoal and driftwood to cook a meal.

A young girl crosses the barren wasteland to reach Shebele B camp on the edge of Bossaso. Once a thriving port, Bossaso is now surrounded by sprawling camps overflowing with displaced people from across the Horn of Africa.

A police patrol car makes its way along the Puntland coast road on the look out for arms and people smugglers.

Having fled violence in Mogadishu, displaced people call relatives from a call centre in Bossaso before attempting the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen.

A smuggler lights a cigarette as he watches over a group of refugees at a safe house in Bossaso. The former fisherman was drawn to people smuggling by the money - he makes around $5,000 a month ferrying people across the Gulf of Aden.

Trying to keep warm, a woman from Addis Ababa joins a group of recently arrived Ethiopians and Somalis on a beach in Yemen.

A dehydrated woman lies collapsed on a beach in Yemen after swimming to shore from a smuggler's boat. The perilous journey from Somalia took two days.

Yemeni soldiers guard a group of Ethiopian refugees beside the tiny fishing boat that brought them across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia.

As day breaks, a man's body is washed onto the beach at Al-Bedha in Yemen by the incoming tide.

A row of corpses line Al-Bedha beach at dawn. Following the arrival of a group of 365 refugees by boat the previous night, 34 corpses were washed ashore - either beaten to death by smugglers or drowned offshore.

Gathered on Al-Bedha beach at dawn, Ethiopian refugees who arrived during the night lay out their clothes to dry on rocks. They were dumped by the smugglers nearly a kilometre from shore after being fired upon by Yemeni troops.

Alongside the few meagre possessions that he has managed to salvage, a young boy breaks down in tears after searching for his missing brother all night.

The body of a Somali woman washes up on the shores of South Yemen. In order to avoid detection, smugglers often force passengers off their boats and into the shark-infested waters far from shore.

Newly arrived Somalis and Ethiopians rest on their smuggler's boat, which was forced ashore by the Yemeni armed forces. The smugglers escaped in a dinghy.

Exhausted survivors of the Gulf of Aden crossing wait for help on a beach in Yemen. From the start of 2007 until late March, well over 100 deaths at the hands of people smugglers were recorded.

Workers from a Yemeni non-governmental organisation hand out food before transporting newly arrived Somalis and Ethiopians to the Mayfa'a reception centre.

Local Yemeni fishermen regularly recover and bury the bodies of Somalis and Ethiopians who drown after being forced to swim ashore by people smugglers.

Graves line the beaches of South Yemen, serving as reminders of the thousands of men and woman who have perished at sea after fleeing misery and war in their homelands.

Somali boat people seek shelter at the Mayfa'a reception centre in the south of Yemen.

Victims of smugglers often require treatment for severe burns caused by exposure to sea water, motor oil, human waste and the sun during the sea crossing.

A new arrival enjoys his first meal in three days at the Mayfa'a reception centre in Southern Yemen.

A new arrival suffering from severe sunburn at the UNHCR clinic at the Mayfa'a reception centre.

Packed into a truck, new arrivals leave the Mayfa'a reception centre for UNHCR's Kharaz refugee camp.

Young Somalis and Ethiopians perch on a hill overlooking the part of the Kharaz refugee camp that houses new arrivals.

Young students who crossed the Gulf of Aden take a break at the elementary school in Kharaz refugee camp.

Grateful to have survived the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden, a mother embraces her four-month-old infant, who was born in South Yemen's Kharaz refugee camp.

A crowded Koran class at the Kharaz refugee camp in South Yemen.

Bossaso is not only the chief port of Puntland, a self-declared autonomous area in north-east Somalia, but also a major hub for people smuggling.

For at least three years, thousands of Somalis, and increasingly, Ethiopians, have set off from the coastline in tiny open fishing boats hoping to reach Yemen.

The government of Puntland says it needs international help to buy speedboats and to train policemen to better control widespread smuggling along its coastline.

In the cliffs of Mareero, outside Bossaso, Somalis wait for the evening departure of the smuggler's boat they hope will take them to Yemen.

A young mother waits for a boat with her two children. Her husband and two other children are waiting for them in Saudi Arabia.

These people say they changed their mind about taking the trip across the Gulf of Aden when they saw how small and unsafe the boat was.

A young Somali girl who survived eight days adrift at sea in a smuggler's boat recuperates on the floor of a large tent in Bossaso.

Stunned survivors from a smuggler's boat who were rescued after eight days adrift in the Gulf of Aden.

At dawn, Ethiopians arrive on the outskirts of Bossaso, Puntland's busy port, take off through the desert to evade a checkpoint and sneak into town in search of work or an illegal sea voyage.