7M Yemen kids face ‘serious’ famine threat

hodeida (yemen) — Over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country’s war will not save all of them, the UN children’s agency said.

“Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition,” said Geert Cappelaere, regional director of Unicef.

“More than half” of the 14 million people at serious risk of famine in the impoverished country are children, Cappelaere said late on Wednesday.

“Ending the war is not enough,” he said. “What we need is to stop the war and (to create) a government mechanism that puts at the centre the people and children.

“The war is exacerbating the situation that was already bad before because of years of underdevelopment” in the Arab world’s poorest nation, Cappelaere said.