The world closes the eyes of the disaster in Yemen

UNA malnourished child lies in a bed waiting to receive treatment at a therapeutic feeding center in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. The U.N. secretary-general and high-ranking government officials from dozens of countries are meeting Tuesday, April 25, 2017, in Geneva to drum up funds for war-torn Yemen. The impoverished Mideast country on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula is considered the world's greatest humanitarian crisis. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

Yemen faces the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but the world has largely closed its eyes, the UN warns.

On Tuesday, UN Secretary General António Guterres opens a donor conference for Yemen in Geneva, hoping to make more people realize which drama is taking place in the war-torn country.

According to the UN, 18.8 million people in Yemen are entirely dependent on external relief to survive, but the aid is not available.

The UN has asked for NOK 18 billion from the member states to meet the needs of Yemen this year, but only 15 percent of this has so far been pledged.

Yemeni Houthi rebels with support from parts of the Government army seized power in Yemen’s capital Sana in September 2014 and made the country’s Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.

A few months later, Saudi Arabia went to war against the Shiite rebels, led by a US-supported regional coalition.

Since then, at least 10,000 people have been killed, 40,000 wounded and 3 million have become refugees.

Saudi Arabia has announced that 90,000 aircraft attacks have been carried out on targets in Yemen since March 2015; the war operations therefore make it very difficult for aid organizations to reach those who need it.

– We can not continue to stand by and watch a whole country collapsing. A child dies every 10 minutes because it does not get the help it needs.

Lack of clean water and sanitation facilities have led to cholera outbreaks. Yemen is not just on the verge of famine, but the whole country is near complete collapse, according to General Secretary in CARE, Gry Larsen, recently said.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today