WFP head says ‘race against time’ under way to prevent Yemen famine

AMMAN: Aid workers are in a ‘ race against time’ to prevent famine threatening millions of people in Yemen, a senior UN official said in Monday.

“We have about three months of food stored inside the country today,” Er t ha ri n Cousi n, executive director of the World Food Programme, told reporters in Amman after a three- day visit to the wartorn country.

“We do not have enough food to support the scale- up that is required to ensure that we can avoid a famine.”

After almost two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran- al l ied Houthi movement, 7.3 million Yemenis are classed by the UN as “severely food insecure”.

“It is a race against time, and if we do not scale up assistance to reach those who are severely food insecure, we will see faminelike conditions in some of the worst-hit and inaccessible areas which means that people will die,” Cousin said.

WFP was able to reach a record 4.9 mi l lion needy people in Yemen last month. But Cousin said inadequate funding meant it was forced to reduce food rations to stretch assistance to more people.

“What we have been doing is taking a limited amounts of food that we have in the country, and spreading it as far as possible, which means that we have been giving 35 per cent rations on most months, we need to get to 100 per cent rations,” she added.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said last month Yemen’s estimated supplies of wheat would run out at the end of March.

The UN has said it will need around 2 billion this year for humanitarian work in Yemen and calls the country the “largest food security emergency in the world”. — Reuters