Due to the protracted conflict and tenuous political situation, the government faced serious challenges in combating trafficking, including substantial internal security threats, weak institutions, systemic corruption, economic deprivation, food insecurity, social disintegration, limited territorial control, and poor law enforcement capabilities. The absence of a law criminalizing all forms of trafficking and the government’s conflation of human trafficking with migrant smuggling further hindered government efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenders. Article 248 of the penal code criminalized slavery and prescribed penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment; these penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with penalties prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape. However, Article 248 narrowly focused on transactions and movement, and therefore did not criminalize many forms of labor and sex trafficking as defined under international law. Article 279 criminalized child sex trafficking under its prostitution provision and prescribed penalties of up to seven years’ imprisonment, which could be increased to up to 15 years’ imprisonment under aggravating circumstances; these penalties were sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape.

Although the ROYG had some oversight over its court system, experts noted that because of conflict-inflicted infrastructure damage, severe staff shortages, financial and security challenges, weak law enforcement capacity, and the fragmented nature of authority in Yemen, the government was unable to ensure judicial institutions functioned fully across the country. Officials continued to conflate human trafficking and migrant smuggling crimes, which may have limited the ROYG’s ability to hold traffickers accountable. For example, beginning in August 2023, an international organization and an NGO reported increased crackdowns on smugglers and traffickers by authorities in ROYG-controlled areas, particularly Lahj, a frequented arrival point for African migrants coming from Djibouti; authorities reportedly identified 450 migrants held in detention by smugglers and arrested 52 suspected smugglers. ROYG authorities did not report if the migrants were provided assistance or updates on the investigation of the smugglers, including whether any alleged trafficking crimes were identified as part of the arrests. Although the ROYG did not exercise complete control over all government-controlled areas and formal state institutions, it did demonstrate a limited capacity to address trafficking in persons. The government did not report anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts nor did it provide updates on two alleged sex trafficking cases from the last two reporting periods. However, observers reported the ROYG provided investigative support in one trafficking case, including providing assistance to the victims involved. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in trafficking crimes; however, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, including the alleged recruitment and use of child soldiers by the government and government-affiliated forces, inhibiting law enforcement action. Government and government-affiliated forces recruited and used child soldiers, including children who took a direct part in hostilities, in combat and support roles. The government reported members from Yemeni law enforcement entities with anti-trafficking responsibilities received training from INTERPOL, but did not provide additional details. It also did not report if it conducted anti-trafficking training for any government officials or provided support to NGOs or international organizations that may have conducted such training throughout the year.

ROYG authorities and institutions responsible for monitoring migrant flows, providing services and protection to migrants, and assisting vulnerable groups – which may have included trafficking victims – functioned minimally. The government had limited capacity to identify and provide adequate protection services to trafficking victims among vulnerable groups, such as women in commercial sex and migrant workers, some of whom were in transit to Gulf states; the government generally relied on NGOs and international organizations to identify and provide assistance to potential trafficking victims. One NGO noted a significant gap in protection because of a lack of service providers in the country; an international organization reported services were available for some vulnerable populations, but dedicated trafficking shelters did not exist. Although the ROYG had formal SOPs for proactive identification of trafficking victims, the government did not make efforts to implement or train law enforcement on these procedures because of the conflict; consequently, some potential victims – such as women in commercial sex, migrant workers, and vulnerable migrants traveling to the Gulf through Yemen – likely remained unidentified in the law enforcement system. One international organization reported challenges in identification of potential foreign trafficking victims because of a lack of awareness of the crime by officials, insufficient identification and referral training, lack of systemic and safe referral pathways for potential victims to care, and general lack of interest from officials to address crimes, including human trafficking, committed against non-Yemenis. Observers noted discrimination created significant barriers to care for vulnerable migrants, versus Yemeni citizens, especially in ROYG-controlled areas. All of these factors made it likely that the government penalized unidentified foreign trafficking victims during arrest and detention campaigns of migrants being smuggled through Yemen. The government was not able to encourage victims to assist in investigations or prosecutions of traffickers and was financially unable to provide assistance to its nationals repatriated after enduring trafficking abroad.

Due to its broad lack of territorial access, capacity limitations, and the ongoing conflict, the government did not make sufficient efforts to prevent trafficking. The government maintained the National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking pursuant to Council of Ministers Decision No. 46 of 2012; its members included governmental and nongovernmental representatives. The government did not report whether the committee met. A draft national strategy to combat trafficking, initiated by the Ministry of Human Rights in a previous reporting period, in coordination with an international organization, remained pending. The draft included plans for raising awareness, increasing cooperation between Yemen and neighboring countries, training officials in victim identification, and instituting procedures to protect victims. The government did not provide anti-trafficking training to its diplomatic personnel and did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts.

There was a notable increase in the recruitment, training, and mobilization of children in the conflict by the Houthis, while recruitment and use by government and government-affiliated armed forces continued on a limited basis despite the reduction of military operations after the six-month truce in 2022. The ROYG continued to make efforts toward a 2014 UN action plan to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers and the subsequent 2018 roadmap agreement with the UN to implement the plan, including by establishing child protection units in all military regions and conducting field visits to disseminate directives banning child recruitment and to verify the absence of children in military ranks. After the first training with military officials of government and government-affiliated forces to implement such directives in March 2023, members of the Joint Technical Committee to Prevent Child Recruitment visited Marib in September 2023 to observe conditions and brief senior military officials from government and government-affiliated forces on ensuring children were not recruited in government and government-affiliated forces units. In the previous reporting period, the ROYG developed a National Plan for the Rehabilitation of Child Recruits, which reportedly aimed to provide the necessary psycho-social and educational support to reintegrate former child soldiers into society; however, the government reported that resource constraints prevented the plan’s full implementation in the current reporting period. Separately, after the signing of an action plan with the UN to end recruitment and use of child soldiers, killing and maiming children, and ending attacks on schools and hospitals with the Houthis in the previous reporting period, the UN and Joint Technical Committee to Prevent Child Recruitment visited a recruitment center in Sana’a to discuss recruitment procedures and preventing the recruitment and use of children by the Houthis.

An international organization reported an increasing trend by the Houthis to subject children to military propaganda and training, including through the ongoing use of “summer camps” to indoctrinate and recruit children; in 2023 these camps reportedly involved more than one million Yemeni children living in Houthi-controlled areas. An international organization reported these camps took place between May and June 2023 in nine governorates, with children as young as 10 years old exposed to military training. An NGO reported that in one camp, children as young as seven were taught to clean weapons and dodge missiles. Cases of the unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers by the Houthis and government and government-affiliated forces occurred with some familial knowledge or consent, while some cases occurred through coercion or threats of retribution if families refused to comply with recruitment, specifically by the Houthis. In other cases, monetary and material support – including offers of salaries and food baskets for families as well as waiving registration fees for the next school year – were reportedly incentives for joining the Houthis. An international organization and an NGO reported in cases where families refused to send their children to join Houthi forces, officials removed the child’s family from beneficiary lists entitled to humanitarian assistance and abducted and detained children, who were subjected to various forms of abuse, including sexual violence. Government and government-affiliated forces and other armed groups, including the Houthis, used boys mostly in combatant roles, to guard checkpoints, lay land mines, and to drive military vehicles, and forced other children to carry out support duties such as delivering supplies and escorting. In 2023, Yemeni officials did not report demobilizing any child soldiers; however, government and government-affiliated forces and Houthis detained children for alleged association with armed groups. In the previous reporting period, the government reportedly operated the re-opened Saudi Arabia-funded interim care center in Marib to assist former child soldiers; in 2023, the government reported efforts to re-open other centers to assist former child soldiers but did not provide details on such efforts. Documentation of child soldier cases remained challenging because of ongoing violence against civilians, security threats against monitors and communities of interest, and access restrictions on NGOs and international organizations.

As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Yemen, and traffickers exploit victims from Yemen who reside abroad. The ongoing conflict, limited rule of law, economic degradation, pervasive corruption, and fractional territorial control have disrupted some trafficking patterns and exacerbated others. Many Ethiopians and Somalis travel voluntarily to Yemen with the hope of employment in Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, and more recently, Oman; traffickers exploit most of these migrants in forced labor and sex trafficking in transit countries, reportedly most often in Yemen. Despite the continued reduction of military operations after a six-month truce in 2022, NGOs and international organizations reported ongoing violence against civilians, including migrants transiting through Yemen through consented smuggling, who remain highly vulnerable to exploitation, including trafficking. Moreover, there continued to be reports of migrants subjected to sex trafficking, forced labor, physical and sexual abuse, forced marriage resulting in trafficking, abduction for ransom, and targeted shootings, including killings, by Saudi security forces at the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border. NGOs continued to report female migrants are often exploited during their journey by their smugglers in sex trafficking with wealthy Yemeni men as clients, while other women and men who were unable to pay their smugglers to continue the journey were forced to work as domestic workers, in construction sites, or directly for smugglers – cooking, cleaning, and serving khat at gatherings. In these instances, the smugglers collect the migrant’s wages, subjecting them to debt bondage. In addition, NGOs continued to report some migrants are subjected to forced criminality; including transporting weapons and drugs inside Yemen and across the border into Saudi Arabia without being able to continue migrating. In some cases, to escape situations of forced labor or forced criminality, migrant women marry smugglers or traffickers in order to enter Saudi Arabia and find employment as domestic workers; an NGO reported in many of these arrangements, the women’s “husbands” mislead Saudi employers in order to receive the women’s salary directly, exploiting the worker in forced labor. Many migrants are forcibly transferred between different smugglers’ camps in Yemen in remote areas of Al Bayda, Ma’rib, Shabwah, and Mahrah governates; an international organization reported some of these camps hold up to 1,500 migrants – where they have no freedom of movement and are subjected to forced labor on khat plantations, as domestic workers, and at ports with no pay. Separately, media reports alleged the Houthis had forcibly recruited African migrants to join their ranks after kidnapping hundreds who entered Houthi-controlled territory during their migration journey and transferring them to military training facilities. An international organization reported migrant arrivals in Yemen significantly increased, reaching more than 97,000, a 20,000 increase from 2022. As in previous years, the majority of migrants were from Ethiopia and Somalia. Although migrant arrivals significantly increased in 2023, an international organization and an NGO noted a sharp decrease in arrivals between August and December 2023 because of the aforementioned crackdowns on smugglers and traffickers by authorities in ROYG-controlled areas, particularly Lahj, where many migrants arrive from Djibouti. Arrivals from Djibouti and Somalia between October and December 2023 were exclusively recorded in Shabwah, 450 kilometers east of Lahj. In total, only 4,313 migrants arrived in Yemen between October and December 2023, a 73 percent decrease from July to September 2023, when 15,227 migrants arrived in Yemen.

In 2021, an international organization reported large groups of migrants stranded in traditional transit hubs because of border closures as well as the impacts of escalating military campaigns on internal migrant flows; stranded migrants were reportedly living in overcrowded informal settlements, detained by smugglers and traffickers and subsequently forcibly transferred across the frontlines of the conflict, facing heightened vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking. Although pandemic border closures were lifted in a previous reporting period and migrant arrivals significantly increased in 2023, an international organization reported at least 43,000 migrants remained stranded in Yemen during the year. Reports of forcible transfer from northern to southern Yemen continued, and there were increasing reports of neighboring local or national governments pushing back migrants across governate, district, and international borders, including by security forces at the Oman-Yemen and Saudi Arabia-Yemen borders. The deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the risk of remaining stranded because of continuing challenges for migrants entering Saudi Arabia, and reported abuses, including ongoing violence at the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border by Saudi security forces, led to a substantial flow of returnees among migrants who originated in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia. An international organization reported it assisted with the voluntary repatriation of more than 6,000 migrants from Ethiopia between January and September 2023; the Ethiopian government coordinated with an international organization to conduct nationality verification for migrants to support repatriation procedures during the year. Perilous migration conditions and lack of humanitarian and protection assistance, caused some migrants to return home through irregular pathways by engaging with smugglers, putting them at further risk of exploitation. An international organization reported migrants who resort to returning home with the help of smugglers are routinely forced to work for an indefinite period of time; held in inadequate shelters; and deprived of food, water and other basic needs. In 2023, approximately 3,536 migrants returned to the Horn of Africa via smuggling boats.

In 2021, rights groups reported Saudi Arabia had begun to terminate or not renew contracts of Yemeni professionals in the country after a policy change requiring businesses to limit the percentage of their workers from certain nationalities, including Yemen. Due to Saudi Arabia’s employer-based visa system, workers who were terminated or unable to renew their contracts had to find another employer to act as a sponsor to avoid leaving the country or risked detention and deportation if found to be undocumented in the country. Yemeni workers who chose to stay in Saudi Arabia without legal status increased their vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking. Yemeni workers forced to return to Yemen because they could not find employment or after deportation by Saudi authorities likely faced famine, extreme violence, and increased vulnerability to exploitation upon their return. In 2023, an international organization reported 60,815 Yemenis left Saudi Arabia, the majority of whom were deported without travel documents.

Since the start of the conflict in late 2014, human rights organizations have reported all parties to the conflict continued their unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers. Despite a six-month UN-brokered truce in 2022 and even greater reduction of military operations in the country, documentation of such cases remained challenging because of security threats against the monitors and ongoing violence against communities of interest and continued access restrictions. Civil society organizations and media outlets assessed in the previous reporting period that traffickers increasingly targeted Yemeni children since the civil war commenced, and children were disproportionately affected by the protracted conflict. An international organization reported the conflict had pushed two million children out of school, forcing many to seek work to provide for their families, and increasing their vulnerability to exploitation, including child labor. In 2023, one media source reported Yemeni children living in rural areas are vulnerable to forced labor in the agricultural sector, including in hazardous conditions.