IOM records 30,378 people displaced in Yemen this year as Taiz fighting drives a weekly surge
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — More than 30,000 people have been displaced inside Yemen since the start of 2026, the International Organization for Migration said in a report released Tuesday.
The UN migration agency’s Displacement Tracking Matrix recorded 5,063 families, or 30,378 individuals, displaced at least once between Jan. 1 and Sept. 5.
About half of that total is tied to one stretch of front line. The agency put the number of households displaced by the intensification of fighting in Taiz and Al Hudaydah at roughly 2,519, close to 50 percent of all cases logged nationwide this year.
Taiz recorded the highest cumulative figure, with 3,032 displaced households. Marib followed with 1,036 and Al Hudaydah with 542.
Lahj recorded 158 households and Hadramawt 132. Abyan reported 63, Al Dhalea 37, Shabwah 27, Al Jawf 18, Aden 14 and Al Mahrah four.
One week accounted for much of the year’s movement. IOM recorded 2,250 families, or 13,500 people, newly displaced between Aug. 30 and Sept. 5.
That is a 393 percent increase on the previous week, when the agency counted 456 families, or 2,736 individuals.
Taiz absorbed most of it. IOM said 1,936 families moved within the governorate, followed by Al Hudaydah with 247. Lahj recorded 55 newly displaced families, Abyan three and Aden one.
Security was the stated reason in almost every case. IOM said 2,243 households, or 99.7 percent of the weekly total, left because of conflict-related security fears.
Seven families, 0.3 percent of the total, cited conflict-related economic hardship.
The counts come from IOM’s own tracking system, and the agency is the sole source for them. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of the weekly figures published elsewhere.
IOM has described the same escalation in its public statements. In a statement issued from Aden and Geneva on Sept. 7, the agency said about 18,500 people had been displaced in Taiz and Al Hudaydah since hostilities escalated on Sept. 3, drawing on the tracking matrix together with government bodies and partners.
It said the number was rising by the hour as families continued to reach host communities and displacement sites.
“Families are arriving with nothing: no shelter, no food, no way to know if it’s safe to go back,” said Abdusattor Esoev, IOM’s chief of mission in Yemen.
“Many of these are people who have already been displaced once, twice, even four times before,” Esoev said. “Every time fighting flares up, they lose whatever little they had managed to rebuild.”
The agency named Maqbanah, Al Ma’afer and Jabal Habashi among the districts people were leaving, along with the communities of Al-Hajab, Al-Rajehi, Hajjat Gabeh and Al Kadaha.
Fighting has also pushed people out of sites they had already fled to. IOM reported secondary displacement among families who had been sheltering in Hays.
Host communities across southern Taiz and the west coast are absorbing the arrivals. The agency listed Al Mokha, Hays, Mawza, Al Ma’afer and Jabal Habashi as under pressure, and said local authorities had appealed to humanitarian partners and UN agencies for more support.
Aid workers are struggling to count the newly displaced, let alone reach them. IOM said clashes were closing roads and telecommunications networks were down in affected districts, slowing efforts to register and verify families.
Supplies are short. The agency said emergency stocks of food, shelter and household items were severely depleted after responses to recent flooding and to earlier fighting on the west coast.
It said 663 households had been reached with household items across Taiz and Al Hudaydah, with further supplies on the way.
The families arriving need cash, emergency shelter, household items and food, IOM said. It described access to safe drinking water and hygiene support at reception sites as a continuing problem.
IOM said it was working with Yemen’s Executive Units for Internally Displaced People and other partners to track, verify and consolidate the figures. The Executive Unit for IDP Camps Management gave its own count last week, registering 2,183 families displaced in Taiz and Al Hudaydah by Sept. 5.
The United Nations Population Fund said on Sunday that its emergency teams had reached more than 8,000 newly displaced people in Taiz and on Yemen’s west coast, with European Union funding.
Esoev also pointed to migrants travelling the Eastern Route, the corridor that carries people from the Horn of Africa through Yemen toward the Gulf. He said some may become trapped or stranded as security deteriorates and movement is restricted.
IOM called on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians, allow safe passage for families trying to leave, and permit humanitarian access to those still caught by the fighting. It urged donors to replenish emergency stocks.
The new displacement adds to a caseload that was already among the world’s largest. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in the humanitarian needs and response plan it published in March that more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance and 18.3 million are acutely food insecure.
That plan counted 5.2 million internally displaced people in the country and more than 2.2 million children under five who are acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely. It sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
Of the governorates in IOM’s year-to-date tally, Al Mahrah recorded the fewest displaced households, at four.
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