Hana, a young Ethiopian woman from the Amhara region, was not planning a dangerous journey. She was simply trying to return home after years of working in the Saudi city of Jeddah. She lived a modest life, selling clothes, holding onto one dream: to reunite with the child she had left behind. But the absence of safe and legal pathways forced her to take an irregular route across the border into Yemen—unaware that this journey could be even more dangerous than the one that had brought thousands of migrants into Saudi Arabia in the first place.
In her last phone call from an area near Jazan, her voice was exhausted. She said: “I am tired… I can’t walk, I need someone to help me.”
But that help never came. Hana continued her journey across harsh mountainous terrain, accompanied by a group of migrants walking for hours without sufficient food or water.
One of the migrants traveling with her recalled: “We were moving while barely able to stand… some people were collapsing from exhaustion.”
This brutal journey reveals a shocking reality: the return route from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia through Yemen is no less dangerous than the journey toward it. Both routes pass through the same smuggling networks, the same unforgiving geography, and the same systems of exploitation. Whether migrants are chasing hope or returning from it, they become equally vulnerable to abuse.
Upon reaching the border areas, Hana was handed over to another smuggling network—reflecting the fragmented and organized nature of these routes. But there, everything changed.
Eyewitnesses reported that Hana was forcibly separated from the group. When one migrant tried to intervene, he was beaten. One witness said: “They took her by force… we couldn’t do anything.”
From that moment on, Hana disappeared, and conflicting accounts began to emerge about her fate.
Some smugglers claimed she had died from exhaustion. However, other testimonies—including from a girl who had been traveling with her—confirmed that Hana was still alive after being separated, and that she was being held by smugglers inside Yemen.
Her father, who received news of her alleged death through a phone call, refused to believe it without proof. He said: “I asked them for a photo… any evidence… but they gave me nothing.”
Information points to the existence of unofficial detention sites near the Yemen–Saudi border, where women are taken to isolated locations. These sites are not limited to southern coastal areas such as Abyan, Shabwah, and Lahj, but also extend to border areas in Saada governorate, including Souq Al-Raqo and Souq Al Thabet, where increasing testimonies indicate the detention and exploitation of women.
In this context, Migrants Rights Monitor (MRM) confirms that sexual slavery has become a recurring pattern practiced by smuggling and human trafficking networks against migrant women, particularly Ethiopians. The organization stresses that these abuses occur along the entire migration route—whether migrants are heading toward Saudi Arabia or attempting to return from it.
As one survivor put it: “We were not just migrants… we were treated as if we belonged to them.”
Hana’s story exposes the complex structure of smuggling networks that operate across borders—from inside Saudi Arabia, through border areas, and into Yemen, where migrants are detained and exploited. These networks do not distinguish between those seeking opportunity and those trying to go home; everyone falls into the same cycle of danger.
Although Hana’s fate remains unknown, her story reflects a broader reality faced by thousands of migrants. It is not just a story of disappearance, but a testimony to a route where danger is constant, regardless of direction.
As one migrant said: “On this road… it doesn’t matter if you are going or coming back… the danger is the same.”
Hana’s story remains unfinished—like the fate of many others. Yet it raises a painful question: how many women must disappear before this silence is broken?
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