Tag Archives: Hunger Crisis

United Nations hopes imports will help stave off famine in Yemen as diphtheria spreads

A nurse holds a premature baby in an incubator at the child care unit of a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen January 16, 2018.

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – United Nations aid agencies called on Tuesday for the Yemeni port of Hodeidah to remain open beyond Friday, the date set by a Saudi-led military coalition, to permit continued delivery of life-saving goods.

Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, where 8.3 million people are entirely dependent on external food aid and 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, a potentially lethal condition, they said.

The Arab coalition, under international pressure, eased a three-week blockade which was imposed on Yemeni ports and airports in November in response to a ballistic missile fired by the Houthi movement toward the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Four mobile cranes arrived in the important Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port, the U.N. said on Monday, after the coalition agreed to let them into Yemen, where nearly three years of war have pushed it to the verge of famine.

“The port in theory is going be open to the 19th of this month. Then we don’t know if the coalition will close or (leave) it open,” Meritxell Relano, U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Yemen, told a news briefing in Geneva.

“Obviously the feeling is that they extend this period so that the commercial goods can come in, but especially the fuel,” she said, speaking from the capital Sanaa.

Before the conflict, Hodeidah port handled around 70 percent of Yemen’s imports, including food and humanitarian supplies.

Fuel is vital to power water and sanitation stations to provide clean water and help avoid diseases, she said.

More than 11 million Yemeni children – virtually all – need humanitarian assistance, Relano said. UNICEF figures show 25,000 Yemeni babies die at birth or before the age of one month.

A child lies in a bed at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen January 16, 2018

A child lies in a bed at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen January 16, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

“Yemen is in the grips of the world’s biggest hunger crisis,” World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said. “This is a nightmare that is happening right now.”

“We appeal to parties on (the) ground in order to stave off famine that we can continue regularly to get food in, to get medicines in, to get fuel in, be it from the humanitarian or the commercial side,” she said.

Luescher, asked about prospects for the Hodeidah port lifeline to remain open, replied: “Obviously since the cranes were imported and are operational, we are hopeful and optimistic that our work can continue.”

A diphtheria outbreak in Yemen is “spreading quickly”, with 678 cases and 48 associated deaths in four months, Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organisation said.

The number of cases has doubled since Dec 22, when the WHO reported 333 people affected by the highly-contagious disease, with 35 deaths. Ibb and Hodeidah are the worst-hit of the 19 affected governorates, Chaib said.

“We can stop the outbreak by providing antibiotics and also vaccinating,” she said. Some 2.5 million doses have been imported for a planned immunization campaign, she said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Larry King, William Maclean)

U.N. seeks $2.1 billion to avert famine in Yemen

girls stand at the entrace of tent in yemen

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $2.1 billion to provide food and other life-saving assistance to 12 million people in Yemen who face the threat of famine after two years of war.

“The situation in Yemen is catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating,” Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in the appeal document.

“Nearly 3.3 million people – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished.”

Yemen has been divided by nearly two years of civil war that pits the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Sunni Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia. At least 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the desperately poor Arabian Peninsula country.

In all, nearly 19 million Yemenis – more than two-thirds of the population – need assistance and protection, the U.N. said.

“Ongoing air strikes and fighting continue to inflict heavy casualties, damage public and private infrastructure, and impede delivery of humanitarian assistance,” it said.

“The Yemeni economy is being wilfully destroyed,” it added, saying that ports, roads, bridges, factories and markets have been hit.

An estimated 63,000 Yemeni children died last year of preventable causes often linked to malnutrition, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said last week.

“In Yemen, if bombs don’t kill you, a slow and painful death by starvation is now an increasing threat,” Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a separate statement as the U.N. plan was launched.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in March 2015 to try to reinstate President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after he was ousted from the capital Sanaa by the tribal Houthis, who are fighting in an alliance with troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The United States has sent the Navy destroyer USS Cole to patrol off Yemen’s coast to protect waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran, U.S. officials last week, amid rising tension between Washington and Tehran.

Oxfam accused Britain and other powers backing the Saudi-led coalition of “political complicity” in the Yemen conflict.

“The UK Government’s calculated complicity risks accelerating Yemen toward a famine, putting millions of lives at risk and making a mockery of their global obligations to those in peril,” Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Tom Heneghan)

Yemeni farmers urgently need support to help ease hunger crisis: U.N

a Yemeni woman holds her malnourished son

By Alex Whiting

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In the midst of one of the world’s worst hunger crises, Yemen’s farmers urgently need support so they can grow more food and provide young people with jobs, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

Nearly two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement has left more than half of Yemen’s 28 million people facing hunger, its economy in ruins and food supplies disrupted.

Nearly half of Yemen’s 22 governorates are officially rated as being in an emergency food situation, which is four on a five-point scale, where five is famine, the United Nations said last month.

“People’s access to food is rapidly worsening and urgent action is needed,” said Salah Hajj Hassan, FAO representative in Yemen.

About two-thirds of the population depends on agriculture for their survival, and it is one of the only sectors of the economy still functioning after years of war, according to FAO.

But farming has been devastated by the conflict, and rural communities need help to restore crops and livestock, the U.N. agency said.

This is especially true for those living in remote or conflict-hit areas which are frequently cut off from food aid, FAO said.

Pressure on rural communities has increased as people fled fighting in the cities to stay with friends or relatives in the countryside, Hajj Hassan said.

Supporting farmers will not only ease hunger levels, it may also help prevent the conflict from worsening.

“From a security point of view, if we don’t give those people the chance to work, what alternatives will young people have?” Hajj Hassan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Yemen’s early warning system also needs to be bolstered so that authorities and aid agencies can monitor changes in hunger levels, and get early information about drought, locust infestations, cyclones and floods – which are frequent visitors to the impoverished country.

“It is absolutely critical for the authorities and the people themselves to … be able to monitor these shocks so … they can take early action to prevent it from turning into a big disaster,” Dominique Burgeon, director of FAO’s emergency and rehabilitation division, said earlier this month.

“In terms of numbers, Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” he said.

The European Union has given 12 million euros to help 150,000 farmers, and to collect more data on people’s access to food, FAO said this week.

(Reporting by Alex Whiting @Alexwhi, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/food)