CAIRO (AP) – More than 2 million Yemeni children under the age of 5 are expected to endure acute malnutrition by 2021, four United Nations agencies said on Friday. of famine.
The UN report warned that nearly one in six of the children – 400,000 of the 2.3 million – were at risk of death this year due to severe acute malnutrition, a significant increase compared to last year. The report also said that a lack of funds was hampering humanitarian programs in Yemen as donors were unable to meet their obligations.
Following the crisis, an estimated 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are being malnourished in Yemen this year.
“These numbers 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 co-authored the report with the Food and Agriculture Organization. UNICEF, issued. and the World Health Organization.
“The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mixture of conflict, economic collapse and a severe lack of funding,” Beasley explained. In 2020, humanitarian programs in Yemen received only $ 1.9 billion of the required $ 3.4 billion, the report said.
UNICEF estimates that virtually all of Yemen’s 12 million children need some form of assistance. This could include food aid, health services, clean water, schooling and cash grants to help scrap the poorest families.
“But there’s a solution to hunger, and that’s food and an end to the violence,” Beasley said.
Yemenis have suffered for six years of bloodshed, destruction and humanitarian catastrophe. In 2014, the Iran-allied Houthi rebels seized the capital and much of the north of the country. A Saudi-led coalition launched a comprehensive military intervention months later to restore the UN-backed government. Despite relentless Saudi airstrikes and a blockade of Yemen, the war came to a standstill.
Last week, President Joe Biden announced that the US will no longer support the Saudi-led coalition. But achieving peace will be a difficult path.
Biden also reversed the naming of the Trump administration by the Houthis as a terrorist organization. The move was praised by aid groups working in Yemen, who feared the designation would disrupt the flow of food, fuel and other goods, leaving the Yemenis barely alive.
“Children with malnutrition are more vulnerable to disease … It is a vicious and often deadly cycle, but with relatively inexpensive and simple interventions, many lives can be saved,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.