Admin I Tuesday, August 29, 2023
SOMALIA – The International Organisation of Migration, IOM has raised the alarm that a large number of young girls and women have continued to brace the storm, taking dangerous routes in their quest to get to the middle east.
In a report, the IOM said about 30 young women and girls and a handful of boys were found in the early hours of Monday were found in a precarious settlement in the outskirts of Bosaso, Somali.
“Some lie directly on the floor, others on top of sleeping mats covered by a mix of sand and dust, making breathing difficult in the sweltering heat”, the IOM report said.
It added that some of them fall victim in the Eastern route and trapped into forced marriages with smugglers, who exploit them for financial gain and trap them in unending cycles of abuse, to being trafficked into situations of exploitation while searching for job opportunities in the Middle East.
The report said the number of women has doubled over the past two years, from 53,000 in 2021 to 106,700 in 2022.
“Yasmine, a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, left home due to problems in her family, hoping to find a better life somewhere else. She fell victim to traffickers who held her captive in a house in Las Anod for more than five months, as her family could not pay the ransom to secure her release. Smugglers and traffickers frequently use force and threats to extort money from migrants in cities of transit.
“Eventually, her captors grew tired of her. “They let me go when I fell ill and they could no longer use me,” she explains.
A passerby found her in the city of Burao as she was trying to return to Ethiopia by foot. He took her to a charitable organization that helps migrants in distress”, the report said.
