Yemen’s children face starvation amid pandemic

UNICEF issues dire warning and pleads for humanitarian funding.

CAIRO — Millions of children could be pushed to the brink of starvation as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across war-torn Yemen amid a “huge” drop in humanitarian aid funding, the United Nations children’s agency has warned.

The stark prediction comes in the new UNICEF report “Yemen five years on: Children, conflict and COVID-19.” The report said Friday that by the end of the year, the number of malnourished Yemeni children could reach 2.4 million, a 20% increase from the current figure.

“As Yemen’s devastated health system and infrastructure struggle to cope with coronavirus, the already dire situation for children is likely to deteriorate considerably,” UNICEF warned.

Yemen’s poor healthcare infrastructure is unprepared to battle the pandemic after five years of war between a Saudi-led military coalition and the Iranbacked Houthi rebels. The conflict erupted in 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition stepped in on behalf of the internationally recognized government, which the Houthis had forced into exile when they overran the capital, Sana, and much of the northern part of the country the previous year.

Yemen has officially recorded more than 1,100 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, including more than 300 deaths. However, the actual tally is believed to be much higher, because testing capabilities are severely limited.

The situation in Yemen is expected to get worse, as donor countries recently cut back on aid.

“If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation, and many will die,” said Sara Beysolow Nyanti, UNICEF’s representative to Yemen. “The international community will be sending a message that the lives of children ... simply do not matter.”

UNICEF warned that unless $54.5 million is disbursed for health and nutrition aid by the end of August, more than 23,000 children will be at increased risk of dying because of acute malnutrition. It also said that 5 million others under the age of 5 will not have access to vaccines against deadly diseases.

International relief agencies are alarmed by the significant decline in humanitarian funding promised by donor countries. A virtual pledging conference for Yemen hosted by the U.N. and Saudi Arabia on June 2 saw 31 donors pledge $1.35 billion for humanitarian aid — $1 billion short of what aid agencies needed and half of what countries had pledged in 2019.

UNICEF could secure only 40% of the $461 million it sought to cover its humanitarian response to the crisis in Yemen, and less than 10% of the $53 million it needs to handle the impact of COVID-19 on children, the report said.

“UNICEF is working around the clock in incredibly difficult situations to get aid to children in desperate need, but we only have a fraction of the funding required to do this,” Nyanti said.

The UNICEF report came on the heels of a warning by U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock to a closed U.N. Security Council meeting that Yemen could “fall off the cliff” without massive financial support.

Lowcock added that COVID-19 is spreading rapidly across the Arab world’s poorest country, killing about 25% of confirmed cases — five times the global average.

Half of Yemen’s health facilities are dysfunctional, and 18% of the country’s 333 districts have no doctors. Water and sanitation systems have collapsed, resulting in recurrent cholera outbreaks. About 9.6 million children do not have sufficient access to clean water, sanitation or hygiene, and two-thirds of the roughly 30 million people rely on food assistance.