UN officials appeal for Yemen funding

Top officials from several UN agencies appealed yesterday for urgent international financial support in Yemen with coronavirus spreading in the war-torn country. “We are increasingly alarmed about the situation in Yemen,” officials from the UN Humanitarian Affairs Department, Unicef, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation said in a joint statement. “We are running out of time,” they said. The United Nations says Covid-19 has likely already spread throughout most of Yemen, which was already immersed in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis because of a war that shows no sign of abating. The UN officials said they currently have enough “skills, staff and capacity.” “What we don’t have is the money. We ask donors to pledge generously and pay pledges promptly,” they said, noting that a donors conference has been organised for June 2. Mark Lowcock, the under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said $2.4bn needed to be raised by the end of the year for Yemen, including $180mn to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. “Yemen is in desperate need of assistance,” Muhannad Hadi of the World Food Programme said, while Unicef’s director, Henriette Fore, warned of a “major disaster.” More than 12mn children in Yemen are in need of humanitarian aid, she said. Before the pandemic, 2mn children lacked schools. Another 5mn have since been forced to quit school, she said. Officially, 50 people have died from the new coronavirus in Yemen and infections have been reported in 10 of country’s 22 governorates. “But testing and reporting remain limited and it is likely that most areas of the country are already impacted, if not all,” the United Nations reports.