JOIN USUN launches donor conference amid fears of famine in Yemen
The United Nations on Monday launched an appeal for countries to fund its response to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where more than six years of war has created the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
At a virtual pledging conference, co-hosed by Sweden and Switzerland, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for 3.85 billion US Dollars this year to address the impoverished Arab country's dire needs.
“Today, famine is bearing down on Yemen. The race is on, if we want to prevent hunger and starvation from taking millions of lives,” he told the conference.
It is unlikely a response from donors will meet UN goals, given that the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating consequences have hit economies around the globe.
Yemen's war started in 2014 when the Iran-backed rebel Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north. The Saudi-led, US-backed coalition intervened months later to dislodge the rebels and restore the internationally recognized government.
The conflict has killed some 130,000 people, spawned the world's worst humanitarian disaster and reversed development gains by 20 years, according to the UN Development Program.
Half of Yemen's health facilities are shuttered or destroyed and 4 million Yemenis have been driven from their homes. The pandemic, cholera epidemics and severe malnutrition among children have led to thousands of additional deaths.
Separately, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that more than 16 million people in Yemen would go hungry this year, with already some half a million living in famine-like conditions.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who is on a week-long visit to Yemen, warned on Monday that aid groups were “catastrophically” underfunded and overstretched.
“It's outrageous that aid organizations have to beg and scrape the barrel to provide the bare minimum food to help keep Yemenis alive, when the countries who wage war and cause so much of the suffering are still willing to spend magnitudes more on the fighting," he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken led the US delegation to the conference, which came amid efforts by President Joe Biden's administration to bring an end to the conflict.
Wealthy countries, such as the US, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, cut back drastically on aid to Yemen last year amid the pandemic, corruption allegations, and also due to concerns that the aid might not be reaching its intended recipients in territories controlled by the rebels.
Last year, aid agencies received about $1.9 billion — half of what was needed and half of what was given the previous year, according to David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee.
This year's conference comes mid intense fighting in the central province of Marib, where Houthi rebels renewed their offensive last month to retake the oil-rich province from the internationally recognized government.
The fighting has displaced more than 10,500 people in just three weeks, from the district of Sirwah, many of them forced to move for the third time or more since the start of the war, the UN migration agency said Monday.
Marib has served as a sort of haven for around 1 million Yemenis who have fled Houthi offensives since the start of the war.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said Norway would earmark 200 million kroner (23 million US Dollars) to Yemen. She said she was “deeply worried” by the situation and that “the enormous need in Yemen is man-made.”
“Now the parties must put the Yemeni people first, comply with humanitarian law and ensure that humanitarian actors have safe and unhindered access to all who need help,” Eriksen Soereide said in a statement.