Donor pledges of $US2.6 billion for Yemen fell “a long way” short of $US4.2 billion requested by the United Nations on Tuesday for the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, aid agencies said.
Aid agencies, including Save the Children and Oxfam, called for a ceasefire to help them reach more people in need in Yemen, where a proxy-war between Saudi Arabia and Iran has displaced millions and pushed them to the verge of starvation.
“Yemeni people…are dying every single day this war continues,” the charities said in a joint statement.
Here are eight facts about the war in Yemen:
• Some 24 million people in Yemen – almost 80 percent of the population – are likely to need humanitarian assistance in 2019.
• Tuesday’s $US4.2 billion pledging conference was the largest country appeal that the United Nations has ever launched.
• More than half of the funding for the UN appeal is for emergency food aid for 12 million people – a 50 per cent increase compared to last year.
• Almost 4.3 million people – or 15 per cent of the population – have been forced to flee their homes since Yemen’s civil war began in 2015, the majority remaining inside the country.
• More than 685,000 people have fled fighting along the west coast of Yemen since June.
• About 20 million people do not have enough to eat and almost half of these are “a step away from famine”, the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said this month.
• Some 20 million people in Yemen lack access to adequate healthcare, and nearly 18 million do not have enough clean water or adequate sanitation.
• The United Nations has independently verified that more than 7,000 civilians have been killed and 11,000 injured in Yemen since 2015, although this is an underestimate as it cannot access some places and other casualties are not reported.
Sources: International Organization for Migration, CARE International, Save the Children International, Oxfam, Norwegian Refugee Council, UN-OCHA, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
