The head of the UN food agency warned after a visit to Yemen that his underfunded organization may be forced to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations in a desperate attempt to avoid widespread famine in the coming months, describing the conditions of the devastated country. by the nation war as “hell”.
The World Food Program needs at least $ 815 million in aid to Yemen in the next six months, but it has only $ 300 million, the agency’s executive director, David Beasley, told the Associated Press in an interview. He said the agency would need an additional $ 1.9 billion to meet its targets for the year.
Beasley visited Yemen earlier this week, including the capital Sanaa, which is under the control of Iran-backed Houthi rebels. He said that in a child malnutrition ward in a Sanaa hospital, he saw children languishing from lack of food. Many, he said, were on the verge of dying from entirely preventable and treatable causes, and they were the lucky ones who were receiving medical care.
He said the world needs to wake up to how bad things are in Yemen, especially for the country’s youngest, some of whom he saw in beds at Sanaa hospital.
“In the children’s ward or in a hospital ward, you know that you usually hear crying and laughing. There is no crying, there is no laughter, there is a dead silence, ”he said on Tuesday, speaking to the AP via video conference from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he had just landed from Yemen.
“I went from room to room and, literally, children who anywhere in the world would be fine, could get a little sick, but would recover, but not here.”
“This is hell,” he said. “It is the worst place in the world. And it is entirely man-made. ”
The UN warned that 16 million people in Yemen – or about half the population – could face severe food insecurity. Tens of thousands of people already live in conditions of hunger, in what humanitarian aid organizations consider the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. About 400,000 children need immediate assistance to save their lives from deadly malnutrition. Worsening fuel scarcity can throw millions of people into deep poverty.
Since the outbreak of the civil war in Yemen six years ago, UN-led relief efforts have been chronically underfunded. This year’s global fundraising campaign was also insufficient – more than in previous years – because aid dollars have been declining as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
A donor conference last month raised just over half the international community than was necessary to continue food aid services next year.
Yemen, which is already the poorest country in the Arab world, has been in a violent war since 2014, when the Houthis descended from their northern enclave and took over Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee. In the spring of 2015, a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States, started a destructive air campaign to evict the Houthis while imposing a land, sea and air embargo on Yemen.
Throughout the conflict, humanitarian agencies have faced obstacles to bringing aid to those who need it most, especially in Houthi-controlled territories; obstruction, distrust and struggle have played a role.
Beasley said his organization has made gains on these fronts, particularly in access and accountability with the Houthi authorities, and now the obstacle is simply a lack of funding.
“We overturned a situation with the Houthis … in terms of cooperation, collaboration,” he said.
He released a new program whereby recipients of a cash aid program are verified using a biometric system to ensure that it goes to the right people. It is a scheme that the organization plans to expand if more funding is obtained.
It is still unclear where more money will come from. Beasley predicted more catastrophes in 2021 if world leaders do not prioritize aid to the most vulnerable countries, including Yemen, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria.
“Around May, June, July, if we don’t have large amounts of money invested in these places, you will experience mass hunger, mass destabilization and mass migration,” he said.
A source of financing for Yemen could be a new anonymous aid fund. Beasley confirmed media reports about the Famine Relief Fund, created by wealthy private donors, and said that some of them could be from the United States and the Gulf. He said the WFP is already in negotiations with the fund. He would not elaborate.
Earlier this month, the aid industry publication The New Humanitarian reported on the emergence of the Hunger Relief Fund, created by anonymous benefactors to help resolve the Yemen crisis, and wrote that it was already in negotiations with UN agencies. UN and other aid groups.
Beasley said he has already sought out the world’s billionaires to make them contribute in some way. So far, the only stipulation that came with the money from the new anonymous fund would be for those who are on the verge of starvation, he said.
“My God, I’m going to take any dollar I can get from anywhere in the world to save a child’s life now,” he said.
Beasley repeated calls that the war needs to be stopped, although the situation in Yemen is ready for a new escalation, while Houthi and government forces are fighting for the oil-producing province of Marib. The fighting left 15,000 people displaced last month, many of whom had already fled the conflict in other areas, according to the UN migration agency.