Seiyun, Yemen – During the early years of the Yemen war, which broke out in September 2014, food and shelter were relatively adequate in camps hosting many of the country’s 4.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs).
But nearly 12 years of conflict and growing instability have led to a dire situation inside and outside IDP camps, while the collapse of the Yemeni rial has seen an inflationary spiral creating the worst food crisis since 2022, with more than half the population experiencing extreme food insecurity.
A case in point is Maryamah, one of several IDP camps in Seiyun, a city situated in Yemen’s eastern Wadi Hadramout province, which together house about 4,899 displaced households.
Framed by rugged plateaus and a wide desert valley, Maryamah once saw relatively consistent humanitarian support from international aid agencies, but four years ago this was reduced to a trickle over the past four years due to severe funding cuts and other factors.
Ali Sagher Shareem, 51, who two years ago made the arduous 1,000km journey from his home in Hodeidah, western Yemen, to Maryamah, said his family’s displacement came at the worst possible time.
“I heard there used to be aid here in the past, but since I arrived, I have not received anything,” Shareem told Al Jazeera.
‘Living in an oven’
Shareem, his wife and three children share a small, windowless shelter assembled from neglected wooden beams and tarpaulin sheets.
Seiyun was a lifeline for Shareem and other families, who found casual work outside the camp to supplement their income, but the local economy has sunk deeper into an abyss.
“If I find work and earn some money, we eat. If I don’t, we go to sleep hungry,” Shareem said. “I cannot provide food for my children or medicine for my wife – no one has helped us.”
Residents of the camp, who come from more than a dozen Yemeni provinces, including the capital, Sanaa, say conditions are worsening by the day.
The situation wasn’t helped when deadly clashes broke out in December between the Yemeni army, loyal to the internationally recognised government, and Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatist forces.
When summer hits, temperatures average 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), with prolonged power cuts meaning there is no way for displaced families to cool their tents, with conditions inside their makeshift homes “like ovens”.
For Shareem’s family, there has been the added concern of his wife’s medical conditions, with regular hospital visits and medicine prescriptions adding to their mounting costs.
“When my wife falls sick, I take her to the hospital. The doctor asks for scans, lab tests and other procedures, but she is usually given only injections. Many times, I could not afford to buy the medicine she needs,” Shareem said.
Other displaced families are making the difficult decision to pull their children from school, skip meals or seek help from neighbours and friends.
“I do not remember the last time my family ate three meals in one day. The first thing I do when I get money is buy flour for one meal,” Shareem said. “We have not eaten meat for a long time. When I do get some money, I buy half a chicken – we cook half of it for one meal and save the rest for the next day.”
Economic crisis
Mohammed Mohammed Yahya, an octogenarian from the Tihama region in Hajjah province, came to Seiyun six years ago with his wife and five children.
He sits in a small room, shared by three members of his family, with little ventilation, almost no natural light, and a fan sitting idle due to the persistent power cuts.
“When the power goes off, the tent becomes like hell … when it rains, the tents sink,” he said.
Yahya has been forced to fell trees found inside the camp and sell the timber to buy a bag of tomatoes and some yoghurt for his family.
Yemen’s war between the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognised government has led to 377,000 direct and indirect deaths, according to the last major United Nations report on casualties in the conflict, published in 2021.
A Yemeni government body responsible for internally displaced people said more than 10,000 displaced households are sheltering in Wadi Hadramout, with 4,823 households – or 38,487 people – in Seiyun alone.
Nadia Saif al-Fakhiri, an official monitoring conditions in government-run IDP camps in Hadramout, described the situation as dire.
“The situation is very miserable and they lack basic essentials,” she told Al Jazeera. “Many families can hardly afford two meals a day. They survive on the most basic food and some struggle with psychological distress.”
Widespread poverty
Residents in nearby villages were once financially stable enough to offer some food and support to the displaced families of Maryamah. Their desperate economic situation now means that they, too, are going hungry.
Some local families believe their situation is even worse than that of those inside Maryamah camp and they are asking for a share of the limited aid that reaches the IDPs.
“Those people are better off than us,” Salah, a janitor at a local health facility in Seiyun, told Al Jazeera.
“When I approach aid organisations, they tell me assistance is only for displaced people. I have four children who do not have enough food – my salary is only 50,000 Yemeni riyals (working out at $33 according to exchange rates in government areas).”
Khaled Hassan, a retired teacher, was living comfortably off a pension of $370 a month when IDPs first entered Seiyun in 2017.
Today, due to inflation, his pension is now worth just $85 and is exhausted within a week, forcing him to spend his days driving a three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi from morning to night to supplement his modest income. Even then, it is not enough to feed his family.
“We are poor, too,” he told Al Jazeera, he said referring to the IDPs. “They go back to their home areas during Eid and receive help from everywhere.”
