© 1994 by Oxford University Press
The Socio-economic Impact of the Involuntary Mass Return to Yemen in 1990
Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford
As the Gulf crisis unfolded in the second half of 1990, the Republic of Yemen was obliged to accommodate 800,000 of its nationals forced to leave Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other states of the region. This paper explores the social and economic impact of this large involuntary movement to Yemen. Since these people returned to their country of nationality, they were not refugees but forced repatriates or ‘returnees’, although such terms are problematical when applied to Yemenis long-settled abroad, as the paper shows. After outlining the circumstances of the mass exodus and the character and distribution of the population that arrived en masse in Yemen, the paper reflects on their experience and condition more than two years later, and considers the extent to which the returnees constituted a burden or potential benefit for a poor country already under considerable political and economic pressure. While the evidence on the latter issue is mixed, the Yemen case holds lessons for other countries obliged to deal with sudden, large scale, involuntary repatriations.