Mukalla, Yemen – A reported decision to impose thousands of dollars in fees on shipping headed for Yemen has experts worried that the price of imported goods and food will increase in the war-torn country, as it starts to feel the economic impact of the United States and Israel’s conflict with Iran.
Local traders and officials have said that international shipping companies informed importers earlier this month of the imposition of new fees of about $3,000 on each container bound for Yemen, described as “war risk” fees. The surprise move prompted government officials to scramble to assess and address its potential repercussions.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Because Yemen imports nearly 90 percent of its food and other essential commodities, economists and humanitarian organisations warn that the rise in shipping and insurance costs could quickly translate into higher prices for fuel, food and other goods, further worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.
Mohsen al-Amri, transport minister in Yemen’s internationally-recognised government based in the southern city of Aden, said he had instructed that the fees not be paid by ships already docked at Yemeni ports or those bound for the country, insisting that the ports remain safe.
“Our ports are far from the areas of geopolitical tension in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, making the imposition of ‘risk’ fees on shipments to these relatively safe areas unjustified from both operational and security perspectives,” he said in a social media post last week.
Al Jazeera has reached out to shipping companies to confirm details of the fee, but has yet to receive responses.
For more than a decade, Yemen has been gripped by a bloody war between the Saudi-backed government, based in Aden, and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls the capital, Sanaa. The conflict has killed and wounded thousands of people and displaced millions, creating what the United Nations once described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Hostilities have significantly declined since April 2022, when the warring parties agreed to a temporary United Nations-brokered truce.
‘High-risk’
Abdulrab al-Khulaqui, deputy chairman of the Yemen Gulf of Aden Ports Corporation, said Yemeni ports have long been classified as high-risk, prompting shipping companies to impose war-risk surcharges. These can reach about $500 per each 20-foot container and $1,000 per each 40-foot container, on top of regular shipping costs.
Al-Khulaqui said that the $3,000 fee now being demanded was “very high and unusual”, but was justified by shipping companies because they regard Yemeni ports as unsafe, despite their distance from Iran.
Although the Houthis are allied to Iran and previously attacked shipping in the Red Sea following Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the Yemeni group has yet to intervene in the US-Israel-Iran conflict. Other Yemeni parties are also not involved, making Yemen one of the few regional countries yet to see any violence related to the fighting.
In addition to barring local traders from paying the new charges, the Yemeni government is considering other measures to pressure shipping companies to cancel the fees, including threatening to stop vessels belonging to those companies from docking at Yemeni ports. Authorities may also allow traders to contact exporters directly in countries of origin to negotiate any additional charges.
The new surcharges come as the United Nations has again sounded the alarm over Yemen’s worsening humanitarian situation, saying nearly 65.4 percent of the population – about 23.1 million people – will require urgent humanitarian assistance and protection services this year. This marks an increase of roughly 3.5 million people compared with 2025.
“Yemen continues to face an escalating food security crisis entering 2026,” the World Food Program said in its February Yemen Food Security Update, released on March 5. “January data revealed that 63 percent of households nationwide are struggling to meet their minimum food needs, including 36 percent facing severe food deprivation.”
Bypassing Yemen’s ports
In addition to rising insurance fees on shipments to Yemen, the war in Iran and potential disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz could cut vital supply routes from regional hub ports such as Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates.
Mustafa Nasr, head of the Studies and Economic Media Center, told Al Jazeera that shipping companies may begin seeking alternative hub ports to deliver goods to Yemen, which could increase costs and cause delays.
“The closure of Jebel Ali port would force shipping lines to seek alternative ports that may be farther away and involve significantly higher transportation costs,” he said.
Nabil Abdullah Bin Aifan, manager of the government-run Maritime Affairs Authority in Hadramout province and a maritime researcher, said most goods arriving at Mukalla port – the province’s main seaport – are transported on wooden dhows from Dubai.
He said that if disruptions occur in the Strait of Hormuz, traders may turn to alternative regional hub ports such as Salalah in Oman or Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
“Large ships come to Dubai to unload their containers, and traders then unload the goods from the containers and load them onto those primitive ships, which have no insurance,” Bin Aifan told Al Jazeera.
For now, wheat shipments from Ukraine and goods transported from China to Yemen may see price increases due to rising insurance costs, while products imported from Gulf countries could disappear from the market.
Shipping lines may also consider routing cargo through the Cape of Good Hope rather than the Gulf, Bin Aifan said.
“Even before the recent developments involving Iran, ports in our region were considered high risk. However, after the relative calm that followed the halt to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, confidence gradually returned and ships began sailing back to the region. Now, the war has brought the problem back again,” he said.
All of this means that Yemenis, already struggling with poverty and hunger after years of war, will likely have to pay more for imported food and goods.
Abdullah al-Hadad, an English teacher from the city of Taiz with 40 years of experience in the profession, said that his monthly salary – less than $80 – is already not enough to cover his basic needs. Meat and fish have become luxuries for his family, and he still owes nearly one million Yemeni riyals (about $670) to a local grocery shop.
To make ends meet, he works additional jobs as a taxi driver and in a grocery store, while his children also work after school to help support the family and pay for medication for his 10-year-old son, who has autism.
“What I suffer from as a government employee is the extremely low salary, which does not even cover basic necessities such as bread, tea, salt and sugar,” al-Hadad told Al Jazeera.
“Other foods that are essential for a healthy diet, like meat or fish, have become a distant dream.”
