Yemen will face severe aid cuts without new funds soon, warns UN | News | DW | 22.08.2019

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Yemen will face severe aid cuts without new funds soon, warns UN

The United Nations is facing having to cut 22 aid programs in the impoverished country. Only half of pledged donations for 2019 have been delivered so far.

Displaced Yemenis from Hodeida fill jerrycans with water at a make-shift camp in the northern district of Abs in the country's Hajjah province, June 2019

The United Nations is "desperate" for funds in Yemen and will beforced to shutter 22 aid programswithin the next two months if a cash shortage is not resolved.

 "When money doesn't come, people die," Lise Grande, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Yemen said. "It's heartbreaking to look a family in the eye and say we have no money to help."

In February at a UN conference, countries pledged 2.3 billion euros ($2.6 billion US), but so far less than half that amount has been received.

Read more: Yemen Houthi rebels target Saudi oil field

Promises not delivered

Without a significant injection of funding in the coming weeks, food rations for 12 million people will be reduced, and 2.5 million malnourished children will be cut off from life-saving services, the UN said.

Out of 34 programs planned for 2019, only three have been funded for the entire year. The UN was forced to suspend most vaccination campaigns in May, and plans to construct 30 new nutrition centers have been put on hold.

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/A. Zeyad)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Alarming evidence of misery in Yemen

    This image of 18-year-old Saida Ahmad Baghili, sitting on her bed at Al-Thawra in the Red Sea Port city of Hodeida shows her malnourished, emaciated body. It has come to stand for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/A. Zeyad)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Saida smiles - after weeks of treatment

    Saida was transferred to a hospital in the capital, Sanaa. After weeks of hospital care, she can at least smile, though she can still barely speak and continues to find eating difficult at times. Her father is still worried: "She doesn't eat anything except liquid medical food. She used to drink juice and milk with bananas but now she can't. We don't know when she'll recover."

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/A. Zeyad)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    A lifelong condition

    Doctors believe her condition has damaged her throat. When her family first brought Saida to a hospital, she could barely keep her eyes open or stand. "We admitted Saida to find out the cause of her inability to eat," her doctor said. "Her health issue remains chronic and her bones remain fragile due to stunted growth. In all likelihood, they will never return to normal."

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/K. Abdullah)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Finally gaining weight

    Her father, Ahmed, who is staying nearby to be with his daughter, said his daughter's weight has reached 16 kilograms (35 pounds), five kilos more than when she was first admitted to hospital. He said Saida's situation was alarming before the war, which began in March 2015. Yemen's crisis including widespread hunger was brought on by decades of poverty and internal strife.

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/K. Abdullah)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Food insecurity

    About half of Yemen's 28 million people are "food insecure," according to the United Nations, and 7 million of them do not now where they will get their next meal. The US-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network, run by the US Agency for International Development, estimated that a quarter of all Yemenis are probably in a food security "emergency" - one stage before "catastrophe" or famine.

  • Jemen Unterernährung Saida Ahmad Baghili (Reuters/K. Abdullah)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Saida out of the hospital

    The war has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine and displaced over three million people. Areas worst affected by the conflict are parts of Taiz province and southern coastal areas of the Hodeida province, where Saida is from.

  • Jemen Taiz Humanitäre Hilfe (Reuters/F. Al Nassar)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    One reason for undersupply

    Restrictions imposed on the entry of ships after the start of the war in Yemen had raised insurance premiums and cut the number of vessels entering the port by more than half. About a million tons of food supplies entered through Hodeida in 2015, a third as much as in 2014.

  • Jemen Protest UN Bürgerinitiative (picture alliance/Yahya Arhab/E)

    Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition

    Yemeni women call attention to disaster

    Yemeni women are holding banners depicting suffering, malnourished children. They protest against a UN roadmap for the Yemen conflict, which is calling for naming a new vice president after the withdrawal of the Houthi rebels from Sanaa. Since the beginning of the war, at least 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen.

    Author: Nadine Berghausen


Read more: Covering Yemen's 'forgotten' war

Of the UN's total €3.7 billion ($4.2 billion US) appeal for 2019, only 34% has been funded so far, compared to this time last year, when 65% of the appeal had been funded, including donations from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE,coalition partners in the war, have both pledged €676 million euros ($750 million) to its Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan for 2019, but so far the Saudis have contributed just €114 million ($127 million) and the UAE €144 million ($160 million).

The conflict, which has lasted more than four years, is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving millions on the brink of famine. The war in Yemen is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival, Iran.

mmc/se (AP, Reuters)

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After 5 years of war, Yemenis are on the brink

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