Aid agencies in Yemen highlighted the growing hunger emergency sparked by renewed fighting between Houthi opposition forces and Government troops, after mobile health clinics reported that hundreds of children displaced by the violence are suffering from the most deadly form of malnutrition.
Key points: more than one in four screened children are acutely malnourished: around 200 children screened have severe acute malnutrition; at least 15 children have been killed since 3 September.
Of nearly 2,900 children screened in areas where there is safe humanitarian access, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that more than one in four was acutely malnourished, while around 200 were sick with severe acute malnutrition.
“This is only a glimpse of how devastating the situation is across Yemen; every day we are seeing more and more cases,” said Akhil Iyer, the agency’s top official in the country.
Testimonies from some of the approximately 130,000 people who have fled clashes in the southwest illustrate how civilians have been severely impacted by the fighting in recent weeks, after years of food and nutrition crises.
“We spoke to Haifa, a young mother who fled Yemen’s west coast as well, and she told us that the sounds of gunfire were closing in on her house, as her house was shaking. She told us that she didn’t have time to think, she just knew that she had to run and run quickly with her family,” the UNICEF official said.
Today, Haifa and her family “live in extreme heat, in [one] a side of a tent”, in AlFirdos displacement camp near Aden. They have no way of earning money and they struggle to find food and medicine, Mr. Iyer explained.
“She pointed out to us that displacement has stripped them of their dignity. This is in fact what displacement does.”
by UN News – Yemen violence deepens concerns over child hunger crisis
