When Rasha Jarhum, an Aspen New Voices fellow and member of the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security, started working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan in 2014, she saw the war in her native Yemen escalate, and her family were forced to leave.
The numbers of people fleeing Yemen are still rapidly increasing — more than 100,000 people have fled the country since March 2015, when the conflict between forces fighting for the exiled President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and those allied to Zaidi Shia rebels, known as Houthis, erupted. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of people now forcibly displaced from the country currently stands at around 2.5 million.
In an interview with Devex, Jarhum discussed the lessons learned from work in this context, noting that these populations need tangible opportunities for upward social mobility.
About the author
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan is a journalist and editor, primarily focusing on climate change, migration, humanitarian crises, and human rights. She was previously an Associate Editor at Devex, where she managed the op-eds section and led a project covering climate resilience in small island developing states. Helen was also features editor at World Politics Review, and editor and writer at the environmental think tank WRI, as well as editing for The New Humanitarian. She lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.
