Sana'a, Yemen - UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres called on the international community Tuesday to intervene to end the conflict in Somalia as a means to end the refugee exodus. "The international community must realize the far-reaching dangers of an unstable Somalia for the region and beyond, and fully engage with the Somalis in the reach for peace," Guterres told a regional conference on refugees and migration from the Horn of Africa.
The two-day conference brought together government officials from Yemen, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Gulf countries, as well as representatives from the African Union, the European Commission, various UN agencies and non-governmental organizations.
"We all share the same concern about the longstanding plight of Somalis," Guterres said. "And there is no real humanitarian solution for it. Humanitarian problems will never have a strictly humanitarian solutions. The solution of humanitarian problems is a political solution."
More than 18,000 people, mainly Somalis, have arrived in Yemen in small boats brought across the Gulf of Aden - more than double last year's figure at this time - and nearly 400 have died attempting the journey since the beginning of 2008, according to Guterres.
Michele Gervone d'Urso, the European Commission's charge d'affaires in Yemen, said the increasing movement of Somali refugees across the Gulf of Aden could be stopped only by ending the conflict in Somalia.
"What happens on this side of the Gulf of Aden is clearly interlinked to the instability in the Horn of Africa region," d'Urso said.
"The Somali population resides in six neighbouring countries, and only by following a regional approach can we tackle their plight," he said.
Last year, more than 113,000 people, mostly Somalis, made the perilous voyage to Yemen, with over 1,400 deaths.
Hundreds of Somali and Ethiopian migrants perish every year crossing the Gulf of Aden to Yemen in small boats run by smugglers operating from Somali ports.
Since the outbreak of civil war in Somalia, Yemen has become a magnet for refugees fleeing violence and drought, and a gateway to the oil-rich countries of the Arabian peninsula and Europe.
Yemen is the only Arabian Peninsula country that is a signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention and 1967 protocol on the status of refugees.
It has been automatically granting prime facie refugee status to Somalis arriving illegally in the country since the collapse of their government in 1991.
