The Rules-Based Order Has a Bill. Djibouti Is Paying It.
By Naguib Ali Taher September 26, 2026 Nearly 4,000 Yemenis have crossed the Bab el-Mandeb to Djibouti. By Thursday, 3,200 had arrived. More than 10,000 may follow. UNHCR’s Djibouti operation is only 15 percent funded. A country of fewer than 1.2 million people is being asked to absorb the consequences of a regional war while international support remains dangerously inadequate. But this is more than a refugee emergency. It exposes a deeper imbalance in the international system: those with the least influence over the causes of a crisis can sometimes bear the greatest responsibility for managing its consequences. The principles of international law and multilateralism remain firmly proclaimed. Yet there is an increasingly visible gap between those principles and the resources and political will available to implement them. When responsibility becomes negotiable, smaller states are left carrying burdens they cannot sustain. Djibouti is where that imbalance is now becoming visible....