Report: on the migrant route, in Djibouti

Par Dylan Gamba — Reportage in Obock, Djibouti

On a vast sandy plain of Djibouti, scorched by the sun, groups of men walk towards their distant home after having failed to reach Yemen via the Eastern Route linking the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world.

Their features are drawn, their bodies emaciated. Some say they haven’t eaten anything for several days. Only a few starving acacia trees sometimes offer a little shade. In this month of April, for Djiboutians it is “winter” and it is 35°C.

Like the vast majority of migrants taking this route, Jemal Ibrahim Hassan comes from neighboring Ethiopia, the second most populous country on the continent with some 130 million inhabitants, plagued by multiple armed conflicts. He himself left his region, Amhara, “because of the war” between rebels and federal forces.

“We no longer had a place to live in peace,” underlines the 25-year-old young man who earned his living as a farmer when he left his village in northern Ethiopia, heading for Djibouti. A journey of approximately 550 km on foot, or 15 days of walking. “Our feet were swollen and covered in blisters,” he says.

One evening, he boards an overloaded boat heading for Yemen. Several hours later, they were arrested by the Yemeni coast guard and taken to a detention center. “There was no food, nothing. We stayed there for eight days before they sent us back to Djibouti, he says. During the return journey, a storm breaks out. Without “the will of Allah (…) the boat would have capsized,” says Jemal, who is walking again, about fifty km north of the coastal Djiboutian town of Obock, this time in the direction of Ethiopia.

«Entassés»

Despite the risks, on land and at sea, several tens of thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa take this Eastern Route each year to try to reach the oil emirates of the Gulf, fleeing conflicts and lack of prospects. Most attempt the crossing from Djibouti, distant, at the closest points, about thirty kilometers from Yemen. According to the IOM, between 200 and 300 migrants arrive daily in Obock.

This road is one of the deadliest in the world. In 2025, more than 900 migrants died or disappeared, the “deadliest year ever recorded,” according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

At the end of March, the latest shipwreck, near Obock, at least nine migrants died, 45 disappeared

In the boat that capsized was Zinab Gebrekristos, 20, who left Tigray, an unstable region in northern Ethiopia, emerging from a bloody war in 2022. She paid a smuggler 50,000 birr (around 270 euros), a significant sum in a country where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. On the road, she is robbed of her money and her phone, then waits three days on the Djiboutian coast, “no food or water, just the desert”.

On the evening of March 24, smugglers piled 320 people onto a small boat. Quickly, “the boat started to sink”, remembers Zinab Gebrekristos, “many people died before our eyes, friends and members of our family”. “I don’t even know how I managed to get out of the boat,” she says from a reception center managed by the IOM in Obock.

The UN organization regularly patrols the desert to provide assistance to migrants. From the Khor Angar post, the Djiboutian coast guard is increasing its interventions to try to stop the smugglers, most of them Yemenis. Around ten seized boats face the station. In these small wooden boats, the migrants are “crammed together”, underlines Ismaïl Hassan Dirieh, commander of the post. “There are two floors, some go down, others up,” he said, describing a “very difficult” crossing for the migrants.

After having to cross Yemen at war, tens of thousands of people each year reach the Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, where they work as workers or domestic workers.

“Common ditch”

About fifty kilometers north of Obock, Gehere beach is one of the starting points. Migrants’ clothes, flip-flops and shoes litter the fine sand. A cairn is erected. “We are faced with two common graves,” explains Dr Youssouf Moussa Mohamed, 38, head of the IOM in Obock.

“Not far away, there are two more mass graves where there are five bodies. Behind this mountain, there is a mass grave where there are 50 bodies. Another mass grave where there are 43 bodies (…) has more than 200 bodies buried nearby,” he lists.

According to Dr Youssouf, 98% of the migrants he meets are Ethiopian

Coming from a landlocked country, most have never seen the sea before attempting the crossing. Between June and August, the mercury in Djibouti rises to 45°C and violent sand gusts blind migrants and divert them from the route. Many people then get lost in the desert.

“We found around twenty bodies per month during this (hot) season last year,” underlines Dr Youssouf. Those whom the sea or the desert has not killed, sometimes end up themselves, like this migrant who, he says, hanged himself last year, “out of despair”. In the Obock cemetery, where migrants who died at sea or on the road have been buried for several years, dozens of mounds of earth are lined up.

« Abandoned in the Desert »

Coming from Tigray, Genet Gebremeskel Gebremariam, 30, struggled to provide for the needs of her four children and her mother with the 200 to 300 birr (1 to 2 euros) daily earned as an agricultural worker. Convinced by a smuggler, she left the regional capital Mekelle in the back of a truck, pressed against more than 160 people. Landing in the neighboring region of Afar, they continued on foot, “crossing the desert and over cliffs all night”.

“No one helps those who are tired or who fall, they are left behind. We were forced to walk like soldiers, while we were beaten with sticks in the back. Many women, weakened by thirst and hunger, were abandoned in the desert,” says Genet, who is waiting in an IOM center to return to Ethiopia.

Muiaz Abaroge, for his part, still hopes to join Saudi Arabia, despite the risks. “It’s scary, but I have no other choice,” underlines the 19-year-old young man, originally from western Ethiopia, who is walking with two people on the road linking the Djiboutian towns of Tadjourah and Obock. “I know a lot of people have died, but I have to get through this.”

Faced with the growing flow of migrants, “there is a lack of means”, notes Dr Youssouf who fears that 2026 will be another record year: each year is “more deadly than the previous one. And we don’t know exactly how long this will continue.”