Fears grow for children in Arab world’s poorest nation as dwindling food supplies and lack of vaccines leave millions of people in need of assistance

Yemen could suffer a “major humanitarian crisis” within months if the international community does not urgently step up efforts to help the disintegrating Gulf state feed and vaccinate its children, Unicef has warned.



The country, which is now on the verge of all-out civil war, is the poorest nation in the Arab world, with 10 million people in need of food assistance and 8.4 million requiring healthcare services.

Yemen’s already precarious humanitarian situation has been exacerbated by four years of political unrest that have now pitted the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition backed by the US, Gulf states, Egypt and Turkey.

The anti-Houthi coalition’s bombing campaign entered a second day on Friday with airstrikes pounding the rebels’ northern stronghold and other key military installations. The bombing is thought to have killed at least 18 civilians.

Julien Harneis, Unicef’s Yemen representative, said the UN children’s agency was desperately trying to plug the gap left by the crumbling state and the withdrawal of donor funding. Last week, he said, Unicef flew in 6m doses of basic polio and tuberculosis vaccines to help bolster the immunisation effort.



“If there isn’t the humanitarian support to the country, in six months or a year’s time, you will get a major humanitarian crisis around food security and around malnutrition,” he said. “If a country runs out of vaccines, that has an immediate impact; if a country stops providing health services, that has an immediate impact.”

A fortnight ago, the World Bank announced that it was suspending its operations in Yemen because the situation had “deteriorated to the degree that the bank was unable to exercise effective management over its projects”. Saudi Arabia, another key donor, pulled most of its financial aid from Yemen late last year after the Houthi rebels took the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

Harneis said he was worried that recent, hard-won gains – such as reducing the number of children suffering severe and acute malnutrition from 280,000 last year to 160,000 this year – could swiftly be undone.

“We are quite capable of continuing our programming: we still get across most of the country, we’re still able to execute our programmes through our governmental and non-governmental partners,” he said.

“However, we aren’t in a position to make up for a huge gap in shortfalls that result from the Saudis freezing their funding or the World Bank suspending its programmes, so we need to find a solution to that for the sake of Yemeni children.”

Harneis said Unicef was in talks with the World Bank and praised the UK’s Department for International Development for its funding support.

“The British government has been good in that they’re continuing to support Yemen, but it would be good to make sure other actors step up to the plate,” he said.

Harneis said malnutrition and a drop in immunity were not the only threats facing Yemeni children. Unicef estimates that the number of boys being recruited into armed groups has doubled over the past year, with children now making up about 30% of fighters.

“The Houthis mobilised their fighters, who are basically armed tribesmen, to take Sana’a,” he said. “In response, other tribes have mobilised back to oppose them, and it turns out many of their tribesmen aren’t tribesmen, they’re tribesboys. So you get everybody taking up arms and preparing to fight – and everybody means boys.”

Cedric Schweizer, the head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Yemen, also expressed concerns over the effect the growing violence was having on the civilian population. Schweizer said the ICRC had been told that the bombing sorties by the Saudi-led coalition had killed or wounded a “considerable number” of civilians.

“We are worried by the recent escalation of violence in the country, and feel concerned at reports of civilian casualties following the air strikes in the capital Sana’a and other parts of the country,” he said.

“Ordinary Yemenis – already hit hard by years of conflict – are now enduring the effects of this escalation.”



Steven Zyck, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, said the intensification of the fighting and fragmentation of the state would only exacerbate the suffering of Yemenis and make it harder for aid workers to reach those most in need.

“Even before the current conflict, this country has been facing major challenges regarding aid access: there’s al-Qaida in the Arabian Pensinsula in certain parts of the country and tribal militias and other armed groups that have concerns about aid groups operating in their areas, and that’s led to dozens of attacks and threats per year among aid agencies operating in the country,” he said.

“The current situation is just exacerbating all of that. We see aid agencies really not knowing who’s in charge.”



Last month, Oxfam described Yemen’s humanitarian situation as a “forgotten crisis”, adding that nearly 16 million people, or 61% of the population, were in need of assistance.





