“Despite economic and security difficulties, Yemen has continued to receive and host a record number of people fleeing the Horn of Africa in search of safety, protection and better economic conditions,” Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva.

The previous record high was in 2011, when more than 103,000 people arrived in Yemen by sea, the agency noted. Eight of every ten arrivals last year were Ethiopian nationals (over 84,000 arrivals), while Somali refugees constituted the rest. Many migrants use Yemen as a transit stop en route to other Gulf States.

Mr. Edwards said that all Somali arrivals are automatically recognized as refugees by Yemeni authorities, while UNHCR conducts refugee status determination for Ethiopians and other nationalities seeking asylum in Yemen.

“A very low percentage of Ethiopian arrivals decide to seek asylum in Yemen, partly due to a lack of awareness and access to asylum mechanisms, or do not meet the criteria to be recognized as refugees,” he stated.

“However, for the vast majority of Ethiopian migrants protection space is nearly non-existent and they are often extremely vulnerable.”

Boats crossing to Yemen are often packed beyond capacity and smugglers, in order to avoid the Yemeni coast guard, force passengers into the water, often far from the shores and with tragic consequences, according to UNHCR.

“Some exhausted passengers are unable to swim and drown,” said Mr. Edwards, noting that at least 100 people are estimated to have drowned or went missing in various incidents and shipwrecks in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea in 2012.

Even those who make it to shore face challenges such as exploitation, violence and sexual abuse, he added.

Yemen is a historic transit hub for migrants, according to UNHCR, and stands out in the region for its hospitality towards refugees. The country currently hosts over 236,000 refugees, virtually all of them of Somali origin. There are also more than 300,000 internally displaced Yemeni civilians in the north due to recurring conflict since 2004.

“It may be more difficult, it may be more challenging, [but] we have moved from transition to transformation which entails peacebuilding [and] around it is state-building,” the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia, Augustine Mahiga, told a news conference in Nairobi, in neighbouring Kenya, of the UN’s future role in a country that had been torn apart by more than 20 years of internecine warfare.

“There is definitely unimaginable change in Somalia from a war situation to an increasing peaceful situation,” he added.

The UN envoy paid tribute to the UN-backed African Union force in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali forces, which last month drove the Al Shabaab out of the port city of Kismayo, in the country’s south, and praised Somalia’s transition process which has seen the adoption of a new constitution, the convening of a new parliament, and the selection of a new president in recent months.

“Ending the transition was momentous because this was a success story which Somalia has not witnessed in the past 21 years,” Mahiga said, using phrases such as “turning the corner” and “quantum leap” to describe the progress made.

But he warned that the capture of Kismayo does not mean the end of the Al Shabaab, noting that the challenge from a degraded Al Shabaab may continue.

“We have seen it in Mogadishu. They do what they are best at: terrorist bombs, devices, suicide bombs, roadside bombs. That is likely to continue,” he said, noting that there could still be guerrilla warfare and even more conventional warfare in some parts of Somalia.

Turning to the role of the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), which he heads, Mr. Mahiga said Somalia’s new President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, had already had two telephone calls with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the two had agreed to begin with peacebuilding activities, with every UN agency, fund and programme working there.

“The UN will begin an internal strategic review of its strategies, objectives, priorities,” he stated, stressing that the world body was now moving “from a light foot print to a heavy footprint” in a country where it has so far had only a limited physical presence.

He also stressed the need for reconciliation among Somalia’s many actors, suggesting that the chances of reaching some elements of the Al Shabaab may be better now as their security and military situation has been degraded.

Stabilization, he noted, needs include establishing law and order and the creation of military and police services, setting up local and regional administrations, and the delivery of basic services such a water and health.

Mahiga’s most vivid description of the improvement in the country came when he described his own experience since he took up his post.

“When I first went to Mogadishu two years ago I was in a military truck. The distance from the airport to Villa Somalia (Government centre) is may be six or seven kilometres,” he said.

“The only person I could see crossing the street was either a woman carrying some food, crossing the street but running or a child trying to cross the street. Otherwise everything was shut. The only thing on wheels I could see were military trucks and occasionally a donkey cart pulling some supplies on that whole stretch.

“There wasn’t a single building that did no have let alone bullet holes but had been destroyed. When I was sitting with the president talking to him for two hours, sometimes three hours, from minute one to minute finish it was just sounds of guns and guns of different calibre, small guns, big guns, big booms, whatever…

“Today, the streets are full of human beings. There are traffic jams similar to what is seen travelling from here to the town centre (of Nairobi). Construction and repair work is going on, the sound of hammers and all this has replaced the sound of guns. I see young men and women walking in the streets of Mogadishu well beyond 8 o’clock… to 10 o’clock.

“There are shopping areas in Mogadishu that you can buy things that you can buy here (in Nairobi) coming from Dubai and this place, so there is really normalization at least in Mogadishu and I hope this continues in the other areas.”

More international airlines now fly into Mogadishu, and, internally, one can go from the capital to Baidoa, Garowe and other towns, where previously fighting and factional tensions had made such journeys prohibitively perilous, he added.

“This is a quantum change in 18 months and improving,” Mr. Mahiga said, while warning that there was still much to be done in the fields of both stabilization and humanitarian endeavour in a country where 1.5 million people still need humanitarian assistance to survive.