IOM says 268,000 displaced in Yemen as EU adds 22.5 million euros in aid

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ADEN, Yemen — The International Organization for Migration said more than 268,000 people have been displaced inside Yemen since the conflict escalated, as the European Union added 22.5 million euros in aid.

Both announcements came on Friday.

The IOM said the displacement had been driven by fighting that intensified from early September.

More than 3,800 Yemenis have crossed the Red Sea to Djibouti, according to the agency. Half of them are children.

The agency put the number of arrivals in Djibouti at 3,836.

Most of those uprooted have moved south of the fighting in western Yemen, the IOM said. It recorded about 67,000 displaced people in Lahj and about 42,000 in Aden.

Abdusattor Esoev, who heads the IOM’s mission in Yemen, said the scale and speed of the movement had left families in desperate need.

The agency said it needs 30 million dollars to respond.

That money would pay for shelter, health care, drinking water, other emergency services and the tracking of population movements, according to the IOM.

The figures rest on the agency’s own displacement tracking. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of them.

The European Commission announced its 22.5 million euros the same day.

The money comes on top of 87.5 million euros already allocated for Yemen this year, the Commission said, bringing its humanitarian funding for the country in 2026 to 110 million euros.

Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner for preparedness and crisis management, said Yemen was “once again caught in the violence of war, while its humanitarian crisis remains largely forgotten.”

“Families cannot wait for a ceasefire to put food on the table or find a safe place to sleep,” Lahbib said.

The Commission said its partners would use the funding to meet rising needs, reinforce their operational capacity, pre-position supplies and strengthen preparedness.

It named food security and nutrition, health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and protection among the areas the money would cover.

Displaced families, women and children, people with disabilities and marginalized communities were listed as priority groups.

The allocation rests on the Commission’s own announcement, which Yemen Herald could not independently confirm.

The two bodies gave different displacement counts.

The Commission said nearly 230,000 people had been displaced in recent weeks, a lower figure than the IOM’s and measured over a shorter period.

The UN aid coordination office gave two further counts the same day. It said the IOM had recorded about 258,679 displaced people between June 7 and Oct. 19, mostly in Taiz and Lahj governorates, and separately put the number at more than 256,000 since early August.

That office put the Djibouti arrivals at 3,836 as of Oct. 17, the same total the IOM gave.

No reconciled figure has been published.

In Djibouti, most of those arriving have gone to or near Obock, a fishing town in the north of the country.

Jose Barahona, the UN resident coordinator in Djibouti, said on Oct. 14 that close to 4,000 refugees had crossed the Bab al-Mandab strait in one week.

More than half of the new arrivals were children and most of the rest were women, he said.

“It is becoming a perfect storm in this part of Djibouti,” Barahona said.

“We are all trying to support, but we really need to mobilize the solidarity of the international community,” he said.

A UN appeal for the Djibouti response targets about 7 million dollars, of which 2.8 million has been secured, according to Barahona.

Inside Yemen, aid agencies have reached more than 188,000 displaced people since August, the UN aid coordination office said.

That is about three in five displaced households, the office said, and the assistance included food, hygiene kits and emergency cash.

The UN refugee agency said more than 2,000 displaced families are without shelter across five governorates.

The displacement has run alongside a cut in aid access to Taiz.

Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, said on Friday that it had been “20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off.”

Laerke described conditions as “impossible for us to get in and impossible for people to get out,” and said water production in the city had fallen by about half.

The World Food Programme said more than 800,000 people in Taiz had been cut off from assistance, including 600,000 who depend on aid and 200,000 women and children.

Azfar Deen, a WFP regional communications officer, said the agency was “desperately trying to regain access to Taiz.”

The World Health Organization said 42 health facilities in Taiz city report shortages of fuel, oxygen, medicines and medical supplies.

The Commission said 22.3 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, and put the total number of internally displaced people at 5.2 million, a figure that predates the current escalation.

More than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished, according to the Commission.

Yemen’s war began in 2014, when Houthi forces took Sanaa, and widened the following year when a Saudi-led coalition intervened. The internationally recognized government is seated in Aden, and Houthi authorities administer Sanaa and much of the north.

Emergency medicines reached Al-Thawra Hospital in Taiz city, the WHO said. Further supplies are waiting in Aden for access to the affected areas.