CAIRO (AP) – More than 2 million Yemeni children under the age of 5 are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by 2021, four United Nations agencies said on Friday, urging stakeholders to end the conflict. lasted for years the poorest country in the Arab world. of fam.
The UN report warned that nearly one in six of these children (400,000 of the 2.3 million) were at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition this year, a significant increase in estimates. last year. The report also said the lack of funding hampered humanitarian programs in Yemen, as donor nations have been unable to meet their commitments.
Worsening the crisis, about 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women in Yemen are also expected to be acutely malnourished this year.
“These figures are another cry for help from Yemen, where every malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive,” said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, which issued the report in conjunction with the ‘Food and Agriculture Organization (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization.
“The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mix of conflict, economic collapse and a severe shortage of funding,” Beasley explained. In 2020, humanitarian programs in Yemen received only $ 1.9 billion of the $ 3.4 billion needed, according to the report.
UNICEF estimates that virtually every 12 million children in Yemen need some form of assistance. This can include food aid, health services, clean water, schooling, and cash grants to help poorer families eliminate them.
“But there is a solution to hunger, and that is eating and ending violence,” Beasley said.
Yemenis have suffered for six years of bloodshed, destruction and humanitarian catastrophe. In 2014, Iran’s allied Houthi rebels seized the capital and much of the north of the country. A Saudi-led coalition launched a radical military intervention months later to restore the UN-backed government. Despite relentless Saudi airstrikes and the blockade of Yemen, the war has caused a stalemate.
Last week President Joe Biden announced that the US will stop supporting the Saudi-led coalition. But reaching peace will be a difficult path.
Biden also reversed the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. This move has been hailed by aid groups working in Yemen, who feared the designation would disrupt the flow of food, fuel and other goods barely keeping Yemenis alive.
“Malnourished children are more vulnerable to disease … It is a vicious and often deadly cycle, but with relatively cheap and simple interventions many lives can be saved,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.