Yemen is currently facing the largest unprecedented humanitarian disaster in modern history. During this month, citizens experience the worst famine, due to the lack of food and medicine supplies in various governorates of the Republic. This is because of the war and the complete embargo imposed by the war coalition countries led by the US, KSA and the UAE, especially the arbitrary restrictions imposed on the entry of ships and oil tankers to the port of Hodeidah. According to data from UN organizations operating in Yemen, the significant decrease in funding for relief operations by the UN has exacerbated this humanitarian crisis.
Yemeni children are experiencing tragic situations and long-term consequences due to the direct and indirect targeting of the countries of war coalition against Yemen. Most of the children are in dire need for relief to save their lives from these situations. The UN calls for supporting the children of Yemen to save more than 12 million children in need of humanitarian aid, namely 4 out of 5 children are in need of urgent aid. The UN agencies have warned that one in five children under the age of five in various parts of Yemen are acutely malnourished and is in urgent need of treatment as malnutrition cases increase across the country.
The livelihoods of farmers and herders in Yemen have been severely affected by the continuous spread of desert locusts, which have destroyed and devastated thousands of farms and agricultural crops in a number of areas of Yemen. As desert locusts destroy agricultural crops in Yemen and inflict heavy losses on farmers and herders, the suffering of thousands of already-exhausted citizens has been increased.
The closure of Sana’a airport since August 2016 has not achieved any military advantage for the countries of war coalition against Yemen, as much as it has devastatingly affected thousands of civilians, especially the patients. The suffering of people was exacerbated by the multifaceted targeting of the collapsed and underperforming health sector. This has led to the death of tens of thousands of patients who could have traveled for life-saving treatment abroad. Moreover, dozens of patients traveling through Seiyun Airport were detained, arrested, and denied their right to movement and travel for treatment.
For more than 66 months, the UN has been unable to lift the air blockade on Sana’a International Airport, despite the fact that its relevant resolutions did not indicate or allow the countries of war coalition against Yemen to suspend the movement of flights to and from Sana’a International Airport in August 2016. This is an illegal, immoral and inhuman decision, and this measure is tantamount to isolating Yemen from the world and restricting the freedom of millions of Yemenis from their right to movement. This will also disrupt the movement of navigation in front of vital and commercial supplies necessary for more than 85% of the population of the Republic of Yemen.
Official reports confirm that more than 450,000 patients are in urgent need to travel to receive life-saving treatment abroad, and more than 42,000 have died as a result of being prevented from traveling abroad to save their lives. Reports also confirm that about 30 patients die every day, especially those with renal failure, who are in urgent need of kidney transplants abroad, and other patients who suffer from severe chronic and epidemic diseases.
The National Salvation Government in Sana’a repeatedly calls the UN to send its technical team for an immediate access to “FSO Safer” tanker which is stranded off the port of Hodeidah. The government shows deep concerns about the possibility of oil spill from it and the growing risk that it could rupture or explode causing an environmental catastrophe for Yemen and the Red Sea. The UN Special Rapporteur on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, Marcos A. Orellana, asserts that, “It is vital that a UN technical team be permitted to board the FSO Safer, if we are to have any hope of preventing the threat of a spill that could be four times worse than the historic Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989.” He also indicated that if the ship were to break up, a spill could decimate livelihoods of local coastal communities, biodiversity in the region, and heavily impact shipping routes in the Red Sea.
