Yemen war sees scramble for scant resources between displaced and locals

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.”

A man walks between makeshift tents patched together from tarpaulins, fabric sheets and scrap materials at an IDP camp in Yemen’s Seiyun city [Saeed Al-Batati/Al Jazeera]

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.”