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ADEN, YEMEN- APRIL 2008.Having been transferred from a small bus, a group of Somali refugees are packed tightly into a waiting Landcruiser at a remote desert rendezvous. Inside the back of the vehicle, a dozen men must now spend the next ten hours sitting almost one on top of the other, while five women clad in Yemeni abayas occupy the passenger seats. Carrying nothing but plastic bottles and jerry cans of water, they are leaving with smugglers for Saudi Arabia.For the economic migrants, Saudi has always been their ultimate goal but thousands of refugees escaping war or persecution in Somalia and Ethiopia quickly become disillusioned with Yemen and join their ranks each year. Restricted in their ability to work legally and unprepared for the bitter life they find in this already poverty stricken country, they simply keep moving in search of their dream of a better future. With their former lives far behind them and having survived the journey this far, they have little left to lose.Costing just $25 to the Saudi border, the overland journey ahead is not an easy one. If they can reach the frontier without being captured, then a walk of more than twenty hours through blisteringly hot sands lies ahead. Many are said to disappear in the isolated dunes becoming disorientated or succumbing to exhaustion. If they do make it, then their prospects are little more than badly paid hard labour or enslaved work behind closed doors. Unlike in Yemen, they do not have the automatic right to asylum and the Saudi authorities regularly round up and imprison large groups. The bigger gamble is that they risk deportation back to the very place they started out from. (KEYSTONE/NOOR/Alixandra Fazzina)