Yemen’s War Uproots 290,000 as Aid Routes Collapse
Fighting in Yemen has forced more than 290,000 people from their homes since August, while shelling and broken roads block aid deliveries. A regional shipping crisis is driving up the cost of reaching families who have fled.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs raised the displacement count on October 30. Another 5.2 million people were already displaced before the latest escalation.
Women face an immediate crisis inside that wider catastrophe. The UN Population Fund estimates that nearly 6,100 pregnant women are among those recently uprooted. About 600 are expected to give birth within the next two weeks, often in camps or temporary shelters where clean water, privacy and emergency obstetric care remain scarce.
Aid agencies have reached nearly 249,000 displaced people with food, hygiene supplies and emergency cash. Around Taiz, fighting has forced convoys onto narrow mountain roads and families through areas used by armed forces.
“In many cases it’s been too dangerous for us to get to them,” UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters in Geneva. He said displaced people also cannot reach warehouses and distribution points when gunfire, shelling or blocked roads seal off entire districts.
The crisis extends beyond Yemenis fleeing inside their own country. More than 65,000 refugees and asylum-seekers—many from Somalia and Ethiopia—now confront rising food and fuel prices, suspended schools and interrupted legal services. Around 9,500 refugees live at Kharaz camp in Lahj governorate, close enough to the fighting for shelling to restrict movement and halt most services.
Yemen has become both a destination and an escape route. More than 134,000 people arrived by sea from the Horn of Africa during the first nine months of 2026. In October, at least 139 people reportedly died off Djibouti while attempting the crossing. Since September, another 4,200 people have sailed in the opposite direction, fleeing Yemen for Djibouti and Somalia.
People fleeing the Horn of Africa are arriving in a country under bombardment. Families escaping Yemen are taking the same dangerous sea routes in the opposite direction.
UNHCR’s Yemen operation has received $36 million of the $194 million it needs for 2026—just 19 percent. The shortfall compounds shortages of fuel, secure routes and supplies.
War across the Gulf compounds the squeeze. Attacks and congestion around the Bab el-Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz force relief agencies to reroute cargo through ports in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia. UNHCR said freight rates into Port Sudan jumped sharply between the third and fourth quarters, with some routes rising by nearly half. Those costs drain humanitarian budgets across Yemen, Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Opening roads, protecting civilians and guaranteeing safe aid deliveries would bring immediate relief. Governments supplying the belligerents with weapons bear responsibility for the attacks that keep driving families from their homes.
Sources: United Nations/OCHA · UNHCR · Reuters
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