Dangers await African migrants on long walk to Gulf RUN FRI 14 FEB 0300G

Описание: (14 Feb 2020) Migrants are walking by the road in the middle of the night in Djibouti, hoping to get to rich countries of the Gulf.
Among them is 35-year-old Mohammed Eissa, from Ethiopia, who was driven from his poverty-stricken home in search of work in Saudi Arabia.
The journey is arduous and the migrants have no shelter from the elements - travelling by day and night it takes them days to get from Ethiopia and Somalia through Djibouti to reach the sea where they can cross by boat to the Arabian peninsula.
Some pay to be transported by smugglers and others, like Eissa, simply try their luck by setting off on foot.
By the road are graves, piles of rocks with no headstones. People say they belong to migrants who, like Eissa, embarked on an epic journey of hundreds of miles.
Once in Saudi Arabia, they must cross the war-torn country of Yemen where many of them fall victim to human traffickers, smugglers and warlord.
But the flow of migrants taking this route is growing. According to the International Organization for Migration, 150,000 arrived in Yemen from the Horn of Africa in 2018, a 50 percent jump from the year before. The number in 2019 was similar.
They dream of reaching Saudi Arabia and earning enough to escape poverty by working as labourers, housekeepers, servants, construction workers and drivers.
But even if they reach their destination, there is no guarantee they can stay; the Kingdom often expels them. Over the past three years, the IOM reported that 9,000 Ethiopians were deported each month.
One of those who have been deported multiple times is Eissa - this is his third trip. Another is Abdel Aziz Abdullah, who is going to Saudi for the fifth time.
These setbacks stop few of the migrants: economic necessity - poverty at home and the pull of opportunities in the dynamic cities of the Gulf - drives them back again and again.
Eissa made $530 a month as a janitor in Saudi. At home, subsistence farming is the only option - and he has nine kids, a wife, and an ailing father to look after.
Many migrants end up in Djibouti's capital, also named Djibouti, living in slums and working to earn money for the crossing. Young women often are trapped in prostitution or enslaved as servants.
Caritas, the charity organization, maintains a shelter in Djibouti to protect some of the migrants kids.
Once they manage to cross the straits into Yemen - on boats arranged by smugglers - even bigger trials await.
The AP has previously documented how many migrants are kidnapped by the very traffickers they entrusted themselves to and tortured until their families pay up.
Others may end up forced into militias by the warring parties of Yemen's complex civil war, the IOM says.
Yet even these difficulties will not stop the human tide. The IOM argues that poor governance in the countries on the router actually exacerbates the problem because it gives rise to trafficking networks and illicit migration routes.
In the end, Mohammed Eissa makes it to Saudi for the third time. 39 days on the road from Ethiopia, he slips into the kingdom where he is immediately offered a job as a farmhand.
Others will walk the same route in the hope of attaining the same.

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