Slovakia Takes In 11 Somali Refugees

Humenné, 25 Feb 2014 (SDN) – Slovakia has granted temporary asylum to 11 Somali refugees arriving from Yemen, who will spend the next six months at the emergency transit centre in the eastern Slovak town of Humenné in Prešov Region, the TASR newswire reported.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Slovakia wrote on its web site that the group, which includes women and children, arrived in Slovakia on February 18.

According to the web site, the refugees left Somalia and took shelter in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. When they became targets of sexual violence and physical abuse, they had to leave Yemen, but they couldn’t go back to Somalia, where they would have been subjected to more humiliation and violence.

This is the second group of Somali refugees from Yemen to be accepted by Slovakia. The move is based on a trilateral agreement between the Slovak Government, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the IOM.

Source: TASR