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Food aid ramps up in Yemen, but funding crisis persists

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Reuters

More food is making its way to Yemenis most in need after donors heeded United Nations warnings about impending famine, but aid groups said the world’s largest humanitarian operation still does not have enough cash to see out 2021.

The World Food Programme said it would this month resume monthly distributions to around six million people in areas with the highest rates of food insecurity.

Yemen food aid 2020

Workers prepare foodstuff for beneficiaries at a food distribution centre supported by the World Food Program in Sanaa, Yemen, on 3rd June, 2020. PICTURE: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah/File photo.

WFP in April, 2020, halved food aid to every other month in parts of Yemen controlled by the Houthi movement after donors cut funding, partly over concerns about aid obstruction. 

More funds started flowing since April after UN officials said Yemen could see the world’s worst famine in decades as violence escalated in the six-year-old war amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“WFP needs $US1.9 billion in 2021. Donors have so far stepped up with approximately $US937 million,” WFP spokesperson in Yemen Annabel Symington said. 

Yemen has food supplies, but the deep economic crisis and restrictions on fuel and food imports have seen prices skyrocket out of the reach of many.

The WFP feeds more than 12 million Yemenis, around 80 per cent in areas held by the Houthis, who ousted the internationally recognised government from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014.

Yemen’s $US3.85 billion 2021 humanitarian response plan stands only 43 per cent funded. 

“That’s not adequate to get through the rest of this year,” David Gressly, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said.

“We went through a major effort to scale up, particularly on the food assistance and malnutrition side…It needs to be sustained or the gains we are seeing now will be totally lost.” 

The ramp-up was enabled by injections from a new private foundation. The United Arab Emirates resumed aid to Yemen through the 2021 Famine Prevention Foundation. Saudi Arabia – which leads a coalition fighting the Houthis – placed part of its donation through it, aid sources said. 

That money runs only to the end of August and other humanitarian assistance remains underfunded. 

Programs for internally displaced persons are about five per cent funded for 2021 and health programmes around 10 per cent, UNOCHA said. 

“Famine is a multidimensional phenomenon…you also need to think about protection, healthcare, water,” one aid source said.

 

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