Yemen’s ambassador to Malaysia discusses residency and health cooperation in Putrajaya
Yemen Herald News 
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia — Yemen’s ambassador to Malaysia met a senior Malaysian foreign ministry official on Thursday to discuss residency rules, health care and the status of Yemenis living in the country.
Adel Ba Hamid held the talks with Dato Mohamed Hussein, deputy secretary-general for bilateral affairs at Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Yemeni state news agency Saba reported.
The two discussed bilateral relations and cooperation between their governments, according to the agency.
They also addressed cooperation on the Yemeni community in Malaysia, residency programmes and status regularisation, Saba said.
Health cooperation between the two countries was on the agenda as well, the agency reported.
The Malaysian official confirmed his country’s continued support for peace and stability in Yemen, according to Saba.
Saba is the only published source for the meeting. Yemen Herald found no independent account of it, and Malaysia’s foreign ministry had not issued a readout.
The Malaysian ministry lists the envoy as Adel Mohamed Ali Ba Hamid. Saba renders the name as Adel Bahumaid.
He is also dean of the Arab diplomatic corps in Malaysia, the ministry says.
Ba Hamid serves as Yemen’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Malaysia, according to the Yemeni embassy in Kuala Lumpur. The embassy says he is also Yemen’s non-resident ambassador to Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand.
The talks were held in Putrajaya, Malaysia’s administrative capital and the seat of the foreign ministry, which is known as Wisma Putra.
Ba Hamid paid a courtesy call on Malaysia’s chief of protocol, Ambassador Ikram bin Mohd Ibrahim, at Wisma Putra on 9 March 2026, the Malaysian ministry said. It said they discussed protocol matters, the consular and operational work of the Yemeni embassy, and the Yemeni diaspora.
Residency status is a standing concern for Yemenis in Malaysia, who hold a mix of student passes, visitor passes and refugee registration.
The UN refugee agency counts about 3,360 Yemenis registered as refugees or asylum seekers in Malaysia.
UNHCR records roughly 181,000 refugees and asylum seekers in the country in total. About 85 per cent are from Myanmar, and the rest come from some 50 other countries.
Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol.
The country has no domestic asylum law. Authorities have instead allowed UNHCR to register refugees and provide services on humanitarian grounds.
That arrangement is being replaced. Malaysia began issuing its own refugee registration document, the Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian, in January 2026.
The document is intended to take over from UNHCR-managed registration.
Human Rights Watch said in May 2026 that the new system raised concerns over how status would be decided and what protection the document would carry.
Older figures give a sense of the wider Yemeni population. A previous Yemeni ambassador said in 2019 that more than 20,000 Yemenis were living in Malaysia.
He put the breakdown at about 10,000 people on social visit passes, 8,000 students and 4,000 UNHCR cardholders. No updated official count has been published since.
Malaysia extended visa-on-arrival stays for Yemeni citizens that year from 90 days to one year under certain conditions, the ambassador said. He said about 10,000 Yemenis had their social passes extended under the measure.
An overstay correction programme has also been used to regularise Yemenis who fell out of status.
Health cooperation has featured in the embassy’s earlier contacts. Ba Hamid met the director of KPJ Healthcare to discuss health services for the Yemeni community, Saba reported, and the two sides agreed to run joint health programmes aimed at that community.
Malaysia has backed diplomatic efforts to end the war. Wisma Putra welcomed a Saudi statement aimed at resolving the conflict in September 2023.
Thursday’s talks came as fighting inside Yemen widened.
The World Health Organization says the recent clashes have killed or wounded more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands.
The Houthis launched an offensive in Hodeidah and Taiz provinces last week aimed at advancing toward the Bab al-Mandab strait, and government-aligned forces mounted counterattacks in al-Jawf and elsewhere.
Yemeni military sources told Reuters on Thursday that the Houthis had taken the Red Sea port city of Mokha.
Large-scale fighting resumed in July after government forces struck the Houthi-held airport in Sanaa, ending a lull that followed a truce brokered by the United Nations in 2022.
Yemen has been in conflict since 2014, when the Houthis seized Sanaa. A Saudi-led military intervention followed the next year.
Pakistan warned this week that continued Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia could activate the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a pact signed last month by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan.
Arab League foreign ministers this week condemned what they called Iranian violations of Yemen’s sovereignty. Iran’s foreign ministry rejected the claims and said it supports Yemen’s unity and territorial integrity.
More than 22 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March 2026 response plan.
The plan puts the number of acutely food insecure at 18.3 million and counts 5.2 million internally displaced people.
It records more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, including 516,157 severe cases.
The plan seeks $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.
The Yemeni embassy operates from Kuala Lumpur, at Jalan Kedondong in the Ampang Hilir district, rather than from Putrajaya.
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