UN Launches Donor Conference amid Fears of Famine in Yemen
By Staff, Agencies
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 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 was unlikely the response from donors would meet UN goals given the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating consequences for economies around the globe. Corruption allegations in Yemen aid operations were also a factor.
Yemen’s war started in 2014 when the Saudi-led US-backed coalition waged a war on the already impoverished country.
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.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that more than 16 million people in Yemen will 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 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 took place amid efforts by President Joe Biden's administration to bring an end to the conflict.
Blinken said the US would donate $191 million in aid for Yemen this year, a decrease of about $35 million from the amount it announced in the 2020 pledging conference.
He called for a cease-fire and for warring parties to halt their interference in aid operations and "allow assistance to reach the innocent women, children, and men."
"We can end the humanitarian crisis in Yemen by ending the war in Yemen," Blinken said.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said Norway would earmark 200 million kroner [$23 million] to Yemen. She said she was "deeply worried" by the situation and that "the enormous need in Yemen is man-made."
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 amid intense fighting in the central province of Maarib.
The war on Yemen 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.
