In Sanaa, members of the minority group known as "Muhamasheen" -- literally the "Marginalised" -- live in dismal conditions in densely populated slums. There is debate over the ethnic origins of the communit.
Black Yemenis -- who make up between two and 10 percent of the population, according to various estimates -- have long struggled to survive, confined as they are to low-paying jobs like street sweeping or collecting garbage.
They count among the poorest of the poor in the Arab world's most impoverished country blighted by more than five years of conflict. They exist outside the country's tribal social structure, a life on the margins, which increases their vulnerability.
In the narrow streets of a shantytown in southern Sanaa, lined with makeshift tents and cardboard homes along with a few simple brick structures, women cook outside on stoves fuelled with scraps of rubbish.
Most black Yemenis live in the Red Sea coastal plain of Tihama, which extends from the Bab Al Mandab Strait to the western port city of Hodeida. Others live in Sanaa in the north and Aden in southern Yemen.
