10 million in Yemen are fleeing, among them many internally displaced people. Some could make to Djibouti, Oman or Saudi Arabia. But only a few, Karman estimates around one thousand have landed in Germany. It would be very important to provide adequate protection for Yemeni refugees. They should be respected as human beings. The persisting refugee crisis could only be stopped if the wars ended and a process of social and economic advancement started. "We need sustainable development for sustainable peace, so that we then can make our world safer", says Karman.
Tawakkol Karman, journalist and political activist. In 2011 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy in the Arab Spring.
David Goessmann: 2.8 million people in Yemen are displaced due to ongoing violence and conflict in your country, but only some 170,000 made it to Saudi Arabia, Oman, or Somalia, the rest is kind of trapped between coastlines and deserts, says a spokesperson of the UNHCR. Talk about the refugee crisis in your country. We almost never hear about it, and the press even, the media, is full of refugee crisis in Europe since last year.
Tawakkol Karman: Because the refugees in Europe, most of them are displaced inside Yemen. It’s more than 10 million people that are displaced in Yemen. So in Yemen they didn’t have a chance to travel, to make a really huge escape from Yemen like what’s happened from Syria. But there is refugees in Djibouti, there is refugees in Oman, there is refugees in Saudi. And this number here in Germany, few number in Germany, those people need a lot of help. Even they are displaced inside Yemen or they are refugee outside it. It needs to focus about the issue, to help them in the humanitarian field, to work with them as humans, to give them their rights. People for example here in Germany they are as a new, I don’t know if this number is right or not, but what I knew that they are about 1,000. So they have to deal like other refugees. They have to have their rights in education, in health, in everything because they are in a great country like Germany. The same thing with other countries. We have to respect the rights of refugees as human beings. Those people escaped from tyranny, those people escaped from terrorism, especially the people from Syria, so those people – we should, the international community, the countries that host them, they have to deal with them as human entities. And here I really want to thank Germany as a country, people, civil society, for their really great effort for helping refugees here. The most important solution for refugees is justice, is helping them to stop the war, the reason of war, the something that caused the war, which is the tyrant himself. The tyrant himself, he made all these kills. He make all these things to really force those people to escape from there, from their home. If we want to solve the refugee [crisis] we should help the people on stopping the tyranny, on stopping the injustice. Also, development, it’s very important in fighting poverty, in making our effort to make a really sustainable development. We need sustainable development for sustainable peace, so that we then can make our world safe, more safe.