Migrant Stories - Hope for a Fresh Start

After more than a year of planning Mr Daahir and is 1.5 year old son finally arrived back to Mogadishu, Somalia. He came to Yemen nearly 20 years ago with his parents at the young age of four because of the security situation in Somalia.

Life became difficult for Mr Daahir as “my wife left me and my son while he was only 40 days old, which made me feel uncomfortable and I decided to go to Somalia. The situation in Yemen deteriorated as the security has totally weakened and conflicts have increased across the country. I wanted to go back to my country in order to assess the situation and find a suitable location to settle and later bring my parents from Yemen.”

IOM provided the Mr Daahir and his son with medical screening in Yemen and comfortable sea transportation from Aden, Yemen to Berbera and provided a charter flight from Hargeisa to Mogadishu.

For now he is planning to “assess the situation in terms of security to see if it’s better than Yemen in order to bring back my parents and to find out the availability of jobs for example in the health sector in Somalia.”

He urges those considering moving to Yemen to consider that “a war in a foreign country is worse than a war in your own country. Because you are at risk of being easily killed or harassed as you are not in your country. More seriously, the availability of getting a job to sustain your livelihoods is very difficult.”

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