Watching over a group of refugees at one of his network's safe houses hidden deep in Bossaso town's back streets, thirty-four year old smuggler Omar lights a cigarette.Working at sea since he was a teenager, Omar spent years helping local fishermen to hunt down sharks for their fins but illegal commercial fishing put an end to the business. He involved himself instead in the arms trade, ferrying weapons to and from Yemen. War in Somalia provided him with new financial rewards when Bossaso became the country's hub in human trafficking, as more and more people began to flee the brutal fighting.The financial rewards for him are the main draw. He now makes a minimum of $5000 per month ferrying migrants and refugees across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen; far in excess of the average income of just $100 a month in Somalia
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Standing in choppy shoulder deep water, Somali refugees look back anxiously from the sea as they try to locate friends and relatives left behind on Shimbiro Beach. Preparing to board one of three smuggler's boats that will depart simultaneously for Yemen, many of the passengers have become separated from those that they had hoped to make this high-risk journey with. As the crew hauls passengers from the water, each is already soaking wet as they step onboard. Before they even depart, the one hundred and twenty eight Somalis and Ethiopians tied down inside the tiny boat begin to shiver as strong winds blow in for the sea. Their fate is now sealed. Only eleven of the people who took this boat were to ever reach Yemen alive
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Salima is nineteen and is wearing red lipstick but the clothes she has on are not her own. She doesn't like them and appears very bashful- or 'shying' as she puts it. Along the rubbish-strewn lanes of Basatine, her temporary home is a cramped, dark room in a safe house controlled by trafficking gangs. There are four such clandestine houses hidden in this shantytown, sending young Somali men and women on to Saudi Arabia, where they hope to find work and a better life. Having fled the ongoing violence the plagues their homeland, they are now free to stay with the human traffickers until they find the $25 that they need to be driven into the desert. Here it can take weeks here to save that kind of money
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Nine year-old Kali Abduhi Omar stares at her reflection in the screen of a broken television set as she sits in a make-shift room in one of Djiboutiville's illicit doss houses. Following a mortar strike on her family's home in central Mogadishu, Kali and her younger brother have just arrived in Djibouti after spending weeks on the road in a bid to escape Somalia. Their exhausted mother curled up in the corner of the room is sick and scarred from bullet wounds she sustained in the attack. Four other Somali women and their children share the cramped space with Kali as they wait to hear news from a female contact about the smugglers who will help them continue their journey in their bid for asylum in Yemen
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Queuing along a wire fence, women form a long line as they wait to receive a cooked dinner ration of tea, rice and a little fish from a busy kitchen at the Mayfa'ah Reception Centre. Exhausted after their long journeys, over the coming two or three days in transit here, the temporary residents will receive cooked breakfasts, lunches and dinners as they recover their strength
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Fast asleep on sheets of cardboard, twenty eight year-old Abas Hassan Ulusow spends the night out in the open on the rooftop of the Hanwari Shop in the centre of Djiboutiville. After fighting in Mogadishu devastated his house, Abas fled Somalia with the dream of making it to Yemen and being able to support his family. Still holding out for funds from relatives with which to pay the smuggling gangs for the onward sea crossing, a week after he arrived here Abas is anxious to proceed with his journey but worried about the high prices being charged. Rumours are rife in town that the smugglers' middlemen are taking fares from the tahrib and then quickly disappearing without a trace. After chatting with new friends, he is now contemplating setting off to follow the dangerous overland route through Eritrea, Sudan and Libya that could eventually bring him to Europe
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Having arrived in the middle of the night following a fifty-seven hour long voyage from Somalia, dawn breaks over a group of Ethiopian migrants and refugees at a sandy beach near Bir Ali on Yemen's southern coast. A pair of tiny fishing boats sailing close together brought a total of two hundred and fifty-three tahrib within sight of land but coming under fire from Yemeni soldiers, quickly turned around and headed back out into deep waters. Returning the following night for a second attempt at offloading their human cargo, smugglers demanded extra money from passengers if they wanted to be dropped close to shore. Despite being unable to swim, most were thrown overboard two kilometres out at sea as they protested. At least thirty passengers are estimated to have drowned. Only twenty-three of the bodies were ever found
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
Illuminated by torchlight, the body of a man is discovered in shallow water at Al-Baida Beach. Bloody marks around his face reveal that he had sustained a heavy beating prior to being thrown into the sea. One of a group of three hundred and sixty five migrants and refugees to have arrived in Yemen that night on two smugglers' boats launched from Somalia. Survivors witnessed passengers being pummeledq with rifle butts and knives as they protested at being dropped far from land. In the dark sea, many succumbed to the water, disorientated and unable to swim. By morning, a total of thirty-four bodies were found at Al-Baida; either drowned or killed at the hands of the smugglers
Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina/Noor
