The head of the UN food agency warned after a visit to Yemen that his underfunded organization might be forced to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations in a desperate attempt to avert widespread famine in the coming months. nation as “hell.”
The World Food Program will need at least $ 815 million in aid in Yemen over the next six months but only needs $ 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.
Earlier this week, Beasley visited Yemen, including the capital of Sanaa, which is under control of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. He said that in a child malnutrition ward in a Sanaa hospital, he saw children languishing for lack of food. Many, he said, were on the verge of death from completely preventable and treatable causes, and they were the lucky ones to receive medical care.
He said the world needs to wake up to how bad things have gone in Yemen, especially for the youngest in the country, some of whom he had seen in hospital beds at Sanaa Hospital.
“In a children’s wing or a hospital ward you know that you normally hear crying and laughter. There is no crying, there is no laughter, there is a deadly silence, ”he said late 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, kids who were going to be fine elsewhere in the world might get a little sick, but they would be recovered, but not here.”
“This is hell,” he said. “It’s the worst place on Earth. And it is completely man-made. ”
The UN has 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 famine-like conditions, in what aid organizations call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. About 400,000 children need immediate help to save their lives from deadly malnutrition. Worsening fuel shortages could plunge millions more 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 also fell short – more than in previous years – as aid dollars shrink due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A pledge conference last month brought together just over half of the international community of what was needed to continue food relief operations for the coming year.
Already the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen has been at war since 2014 when the Houthis descended from their northern enclave and took over Sana’a, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee. In the spring of 2015, a US-backed Saudi-led coalition launched a destructive air campaign to dislodge the Houthis while imposing a land, sea and air embargo on Yemen.
Throughout the conflict, humanitarian organizations have faced obstacles in obtaining aid to those who need it most, particularly in Houthi-controlled areas; obstruction, mistrust and fighting have played a role.
Beasley said his organization has made gains on these fronts, particularly in access to and accountability to Houthi authorities, and now the obstacle is simply a lack of funding.
“We have turned a corner with the Houthis … in terms of cooperation, cooperation,” he said.
He praised a new program that authenticates recipients of a cash utility through a biometric system to make sure it goes to the right people. It’s a scheme the organization wants to scale up if they can get more funding.
It remains unclear where more money can come from. Beasley predicted more disasters in 2021 if world leaders did not prioritize helping the most vulnerable countries, including Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria.
“Around May, June, July, if we haven’t put huge amounts of money into these places, you’re going to have mass starvation, mass destabilization and mass migration,” he said.
One source of funding for Yemen could be a new anonymous aid fund. Beasley confirmed media reports about the Famine Relief Fund, founded by wealthy private donors, and said some of them could be from the United States and the Gulf. He said the WFP was already in talks with the fund. He didn’t want to elaborate.
Earlier this month, the aid industry-focused publication The New Humanitarian reported on the rise of the Famine Relief Fund, founded by anonymous donors to help tackle the crisis in Yemen, and wrote that it was already in talks with UN agencies and other relief groups.
Beasley said he has already reached out to the world’s billionaires to contribute them in some way. So far, the only provision that came with the money from the new anonymous fund would be that it goes to those who are teetering on the brink of famine, he said.
“My God, I’m going to take every dollar I can get from around the world to save a child’s life now,” he said.
Beasley reiterated calls for the war to be stopped, although the situation on the ground in Yemen is poised for another escalation as Houthi and the government compete for the oil-producing province of Marib. Fighting there has displaced 15,000 people in the past month, many of whom had already fled conflict in other areas, the UN migration agency said.