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In Yemen, the taste of fruits, vegetables and fresh meat is a distant memory. It's not that these food products can not be found in the markets, but rather that they have become expensive luxury products. Prices have skyrocketed, which means that most people can no longer afford to buy food.
"Everything has become more expensive," DW Mirella Hodeib of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told IRIN. She has been working in Yemen for more than a year now, but since the murder of one of her colleagues in April, she has not been allowed to walk around the capital, Sana'a. His local colleagues told him that "the cost of rice, beans, eggs and cooking oil has increased dramatically".
In Yemen, there is still food on the streets, but their prices have become unaffordable.
Bombs, inflation and widespread hunger
Yemen's civil war broke out in late 2014. Over the past three years, it has degenerated into a genuine proxy war between Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority states for the Houthi militia, backed by the 'Iran. The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia wants to reinstate former president Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi, who was deposed by the Houthis in 2015. The Houthis control large areas of northern Yemen, Sanaa and the important port city of the country, Hodeida, through which and many food deliveries reach Yemen.
Since the beginning of the war, the alliance led by Saudi Arabia has launched 17,000 air strikes against the Houthi positions. The peace talks, originally scheduled for September this year, have never been held. And so the bombs continue to rain, and the cost of food continues to increase. Humanitarian agencies, alarmed by the state of affairs, warned Yemen of the greatest famine the world has seen in 100 years.
Famine threatens
Yemen has a population of about 30 million inhabitants. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) provides food to 8.5 million of them. Half a million children suffer from severe malnutrition, reported the UN.
Humanitarian agencies warn that Yemen's already desperate situation is worsening rapidly. "Tens of thousands of poor families, barely able to buy what they needed just a few weeks ago, can no longer afford to eat," said Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, the British daily Tthe Guardian. "We are literally looking at hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who may not survive," added Mr. Grande.
Herv Verhoosel, WFP's chief spokesperson, warned earlier this week: "If the situation persists, we could see 3.5 million Yemenis in severe food insecurity, nearly 12 million in total, who need urgently needed regular food aid to prevent them from sliding into conditions similar to famine ". He called for additional funding from the UN and stressed that the precarious security situation in Yemen made it difficult to transfer aid to those in need.
Houthists pay only fighters
Before the start of the war, the state was the largest employer in Yemen. Now, however, he has largely stopped paying people's wages. The private sector is in tatters and the International Monetary Fund indicates that Yemen's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has more than halved compared to 2014. Even before the fighting started, Yemen was one of the worst countries in the world. of the poorest countries in the world.
The Houthi government pays its fighters, but not its officials or teachers. Physicians and their staff depend on the support of external organizations. The fighting has damaged much of the country's sanitation infrastructure, which can rarely be rebuilt. Hodeib, of the ICRC, explains that this is at the origin of the spread of preventable diseases such as cholera, diphtheria and measles.
In Yemen, children die from preventable diseases, such as those caused by diphtheria
Will more money help?
The UN is looking for new ways to combat this increasingly serious humanitarian crisis. Great think that it would be more efficient to give money to impoverished families in Yemen. "It allows them to buy what they need, when they need it," she said. The Guardian, Adding that "humanitarians are looking for ways to expand money programs as quickly as possible". In Yemen, about one million people are already receiving food stamps.
But Suze van Meegen, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, doubts that more money is making improvements. "The crisis does not lie with money, it is about stopping the war," she said. The Guardian. People are starving "in huge numbers," she said. She also criticized the British government: "There is a duplicity in the UK, for example, where the UK government provides a lot of money to help us help people with help, but it could get more for his money if he stopped selling arms to Saudi Arabia. "
The air strikes filled Sanaa with ruins and made it more difficult to provide help
Britain is not the only country selling arms to the Saudis. In the summer, US President Donald Trump reached an agreement to export billions of dollars worth of arms to the country. Germany has also greened new arms deliveries.
Hodeib stresses that aid agencies will not be able to end the humanitarian crisis. "They can not take care of millions of hungry people in Yemen, nor can they keep the country's health sector operational." Instead, she believes that only concerted political action can put an end to this suffering.
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