The UN has stopped food aid to Yemen. Due to a lack of finances, the World Food Programme has been “forced” to limit aid to Yemen, predicting an increase in hunger in the war-torn country in the coming months.
Yemen’s nearly eight-year conflict between Saudi-backed government forces and Houthi rebels has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, according to the UN.
The UN has stopped food aid to Yemen. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the violence is expected to kill 377,000 people by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, four million people have been internally displaced as a result of the war, with the World Food Programme aiming to feed 11.1 million people by November 2021. The UN warned in September that 16 million Yemenis were “on the verge of hunger.”
“From January, eight million will receive a reduced food ration, while five million at immediate risk of slipping into famine conditions will remain on a full ration,” the UN agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to UNICEF, over 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen are already suffering from acute malnutrition, with 400,000 more predicted to succumb to life-threatening severe malnutrition in the coming months.
“WFP food stocks in Yemen are running dangerously low,” WFP Regional Director Corinne Fleischer said in a statement.
“Every time we reduce the amount of food, we know that more people who are already hungry and food insecure will join the ranks of the millions who are starving. But desperate times call for desperate measures.”
WFP estimates that it will require $813 million in May to continue to assist Yemen’s most vulnerable, and $1.97 billion in 2022 to continue to provide food assistance to households on the verge of starvation.
As the government retreated, Houthi rebels took control of Sanaa’s capital in 2014, forcing a Saudi-led coalition to invade in 2015 in support of the government. Both sides have been accused of abusing each other during the conflict.
The violence has centred in recent months on Marib, the government’s last major foothold in the Houthi-controlled north, displacing tens of thousands more people.
Officials claimed Monday that assistance flights had been halted as a result of airstrikes on Houthi objectives at the international airport in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.
