His Excellency Hussein Muhammad 'Arab
Ministry of the Interior
Sana'a
Republic of Yemen

Your Excellency:

I wish to express my concern regarding the deportation of a group of Somali refugees who were forcibly returned to Somalia from your country in 1995.

As you know, armed conflict in Somalia forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their country to escape the deliberate and arbitrary killings, detention, torture, rape and ill-treatment carried out by the warring factions there. Thousands of Somalis sought refuge in Yemen where they were housed in camps in various parts of the country.

However, in August 1995, your government began a campaign of deportation against so-called "illegal" residents. A number of children are believed to have been among a group of at least 418 Somali nationals deported to Somalia in the early days of that campaign. It is my understanding that many individuals in that group had been officially recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but they were deported anyway. Also, according to some reports, police involved in that operation beat some of the refugees, destroyed property, forcibly separated parents from their children, and confiscated documents proving refugee status.

Your Excellency, surely you are aware that Yemen is a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and is prohibited under international law from forcibly returning individuals to a country where they risk serious human rights violations upon their return. Clearly, the deportation of the 418 Somali refugees was carried out in contradiction to your government's international obligations under this agreement.

Your country is also a State Party to the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and, as such, is bound to hold the best interests of the child as paramount in any dealings with children and obliged to take special care in dealing with refugee children. By forcibly separating the Somali children from their parents and returning them to a country where they or their families were at serious risk of human rights violations, the Yemeni government failed to fulfill its commitment as a State Party to this treaty.

I would like very much to know what happened to the Somali refugees who were forcibly deported from Yemen in 1995, and request a response from your government. I would also like to know just how many children were among those deported. In addition, I strongly urge the Yemeni government to refrain from forcibly returning any person to a country where he or she is likely to face human rights violations, and to fulfill its obligations under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Respectfully yours,