“The increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action. More children will die with every day that passes without action,” the report says.
© European Union 2018 (photo by: Peter Biro)
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams
Underscoring the urgent need to end a war that is responsible for what it calls the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” the United Nations on Friday published a report warning that more than two million Yemeni children under the age of five are projected to suffer “acute malnutrition” in 2021, with 400,000 of them at risk of death if they do not receive desperately needed treatment in time.
“Families in Yemen have been in the grip of conflict for too long, and more recent threats such as Covid-19 have only been adding to their relentless plight.”—Qu Dongyu, FAO
According to the latest? Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Acute Malnutrition report (pdf), 2,254,663 Yemeni children under five years old are so malnourished that they require medical treatment. Of these, 395,195 suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which is potentially fatal. Aditionally, 1,155,653 pregnant and breastfeeding women are “acutely malnourished.”
“These numbers are yet another cry for help from Yemen, where each malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive,” said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, which prepared the report with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. “The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mix of conflict, economic collapse, and a severe shortage of funding.”
News: Acute malnutrition threatens half of children under five in #Yemen in 2021.
Humanitarian crisis continues to exert a terrible toll on Yemen's children, warn @FAO, @UNICEF, @WFP and @WHO.
Find out more: https://t.co/WwH4yoJGdc pic.twitter.com/P8CqeojfyE
— FAO Newsroom (@FAOnews) February 12, 2021
Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said that “the increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action. More children will die with every day that passes without action.”
Qu Dongyu, who heads the FAO, added that “families in Yemen have been in the grip of conflict for too long, and more recent threats such as Covid-19 have only been adding to their relentless plight.”
Yemen’s civil war, which began in late 2014, has directly or indirectly claimed more than 233,000 lives, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Foreign intervention in the conflict has severely exacerbated Yemeni suffering, with thousands of men, women, and children killed by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes and tens of thousands more perishing due to a coalition blockade.
“We need to press for additional humanitarian aid in all parts of Yemen.”
—Rep. Ro Khanna
Last week, President Joe Biden announced that the United States—which previously backed the war with weapons, logistical, and diplomatic aid—would no longer support Saudi-led “offensive operations” in Yemen, although he did not say whether U.S. drone and other airstrikes there, which have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians, would continue.
Last month, the Biden administration said the U.S. would temporarily freeze arms sales to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pending further review.
In an interview with The Intercept on Friday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said that “we need a commitment from Biden to use all of his leverage to end the Saudi-led de facto blockade of Yemen.”
“We need to confirm we’ve ended all arms sales to the Saudis, and that we won’t fulfill any outstanding weapons contracts,” Khanna added. “We need to press for additional humanitarian aid in all parts of Yemen.”
The problem is those perpetrating this crime don’t care, and will never be accountable.
“The increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action. More children will die with every day that passes without action,” the report says.
It is not like “international community” does not do anything. For example, there was a big investment in bioidentification, to properly approve who and where receives aid.
So there are some ships with “humanitarian aid”, carefully screened lest some “dual use” stuff goes through, and someone plays Saint Nicholas, making a list and checking it twice who deserves aid packets.
How about lifting the financial blockade, maritime blockade, aerial blockade? Just let Yemenis restore their country?
It’s not just Biden/the Dems/the Tories. If we help in any way, we are complicit. No-one can claim they didn’t know.
“PRESTON, UK – Jack sits down with his pint in the Fielden Arms in Mellor and contemplates his latest shift making Typhoon warplanes for the Saudi air force. Tucking into steak and chips, the 25-year-old talks of moving in with his girlfriend, his good pay at the nearby BAE factory – £40,000, almost twice the local average – and the security it brings. And then he thinks of the people those planes will be sent to kill.
“You see the children in Yemen starving on the 10 o’clock news,” he tells Middle East Eye. “But you try to not pay attention and just get on with it. You are in essence building a weapon of mass destruction.”
His friend, Harry, interjects: “It’s really weird and there is no way to describe it, because you are in essence building a weapon of mass destruction.”
So why don’t they quit? “Good pay and job security,” Jack responds, taking another sip of his beer. “If the military contracts go, 7,000 people go with them.”
Jack is like thousands of others who works at the BAE Systems factory in nearby Samlesbury, outside Preston in Lancashire, making parts that will be assembled in nearby Warton to create Typhoons, the most advanced jet fighters operated by the Saudis over Yemen. There, the Saudis have contributed to a civil war with the most terrible violence: bombing civilians, blowing up hospitals and imposing a siege that has condemned millions of Yemenis to slow starvation and poverty. And Britain, in its wisdom, has sold the Saudis the hardware to do it. Since the war began in 2015, the UK has approved arms sales to Riyadh worth more than $3.3bn. Many of those weapons have come from BAE factories like Samlesbury, built by workers like Jack.”
see: middleeasteye.net/news/made-britain-tested-yemenis-reality-working-bombmakers
This is a horrible indictment of humanity; particularly, of Industrialized countries .
Anyone know of a trustworthy organization to which we can donate?
Instead of doing something about this USA?UK aided slaughter of people in the poorest country in the Arab world,we see increasing sanctions on Syria, Iran, Libya, even Venezuela, and at the same time interference in China’s internal affairs with pretend concern for the “imprisoned, ill-treated Uighurs, the only Muslims the “humanitarian west” cares about.
All of this is done at the behest of the Zionist State due to their imaginary threat from Iran. If the Zionist State and the US stopped threatening Iran and end the sanctions, Iran would not have to prepare to defend themselves—which we use as a pretext to charge them with being the offensive threat. If left alone, they would not threaten anyone; they have not done so for centuries. The collective conscience of the elites, who either support or actually impose this degree of cruelty and suffering, has been absorbed by black holes.
You could end this savagery, Joe Biden, in a heartbeat.
Stop playing games about this filthy war America helped start and has supplied and supported.
All you have done is try to improve America’s public-relations profile, not end the slaughter.
Get on the phone and tell the Prince it is to stop, immediately. Good God, it is American weapons they mainly use. You could sign an executive order halting all sales.
But I know you won’t do that.
You are a fifty-year veteran of supporting America’s brutality abroad and its alliances with human monsters like the Crown Prince and the Generalissimo of Egypt and the war criminal Prime Minister of Israel.
And I don’t recall a single act of courage in your career.
Politicians like you are a big part of what is wrong with America.
The games being played here I am afraid presage future events in the Middle East.
Just as the other day the pirate American soldiers in Syria apparently secretly brought in a new supply of weapons to secure their illegal occupation and theft of resources – all intended, of course, to keep Syria weak and in ruins and its millions of refugees painfully scattered.
spot on Mr.Chuckman.
Dear Mr. Chuckman,
I cannot agree with you more. When a man who happens to be white speaks up like this, I feel there is still humanity left in this country, a country I chose to call my home since 1969. You have my utmost respect and admiration. I love you and all the people at Consortium News, including CN supporters.
“The increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action.” Of course one would think this but – with so many awful things going on in the world that “should shock us into action” the reality of such heart-wrenching stories gets lost and all but forgotten as the suffering continues. We are separated from knowing and seeing what goes on outside of our own experience – we are cut off from the pain of others. When I look at government policies and priorities, it’s almost as if our humanity is being bred out of the population intentionally. All is lost when we harden our hearts.
Exactly John- decades of PR to rationalize our hearts’ hardening.