With millions of children "acutely malnourished" in Yemen, and most of the country lacking food, the Arab nation could face an all-out famine in 2017. A UN envoy also criticized Yemeni leaders for not discussing peace.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/H. Mohammed
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Migrants in Yemen
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Over 10 million Yemenis require "immediate assistance to save or sustain their lives," UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien warned on Thursday.
The situation is especially dire among children, he added, with over 2.2 million of them "acutely malnourished" and a child under the age of five dying every 10 minutes of preventable causes.
Also, the 14-million-strong country could run out of wheat in just months, with supply chains crippled by the civil war that started in September 2014.
Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition
In war-torn Yemen, 18-year-old Saida suffered from malnutrition for years. These photos document her slow recovery.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Alarming evidence of misery in Yemen
This image of 18-year-old Saida Ahmad Baghili, sitting on her bed at Al-Thawra in the Red Sea Port city of Hodeida shows her malnourished, emaciated body. It has come to stand for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Saida smiles - after weeks of treatment
Saida was transferred to a hospital in the capital, Sanaa. After weeks of hospital care, she can at least smile, though she can still barely speak and continues to find eating difficult at times. Her father is still worried: "She doesn't eat anything except liquid medical food. She used to drink juice and milk with bananas but now she can't. We don't know when she'll recover."
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
A lifelong condition
Doctors believe her condition has damaged her throat. When her family first brought Saida to a hospital, she could barely keep her eyes open or stand. "We admitted Saida to find out the cause of her inability to eat," her doctor said. "Her health issue remains chronic and her bones remain fragile due to stunted growth. In all likelihood, they will never return to normal."
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Finally gaining weight
Her father, Ahmed, who is staying nearby to be with his daughter, said his daughter's weight has reached 16 kilograms (35 pounds), five kilos more than when she was first admitted to hospital. He said Saida's situation was alarming before the war, which began in March 2015. Yemen's crisis including widespread hunger was brought on by decades of poverty and internal strife.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Food insecurity
About half of Yemen's 28 million people are "food insecure," according to the United Nations, and 7 million of them do not now where they will get their next meal. The US-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network, run by the US Agency for International Development, estimated that a quarter of all Yemenis are probably in a food security "emergency" - one stage before "catastrophe" or famine.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Saida out of the hospital
The war has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine and displaced over three million people. Areas worst affected by the conflict are parts of Taiz province and southern coastal areas of the Hodeida province, where Saida is from.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
One reason for undersupply
Restrictions imposed on the entry of ships after the start of the war in Yemen had raised insurance premiums and cut the number of vessels entering the port by more than half. About a million tons of food supplies entered through Hodeida in 2015, a third as much as in 2014.
Image: Reuters/F. Al Nassar
Yemeni women call attention to disaster
Yemeni women are holding banners depicting suffering, malnourished children. They protest against a UN roadmap for the Yemen conflict, which is calling for naming a new vice president after the withdrawal of the Houthi rebels from Sanaa. Since the beginning of the war, at least 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen.
Image: picture alliance/Yahya Arhab/E
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"If there is no immediate action, famine is now a possible scenario for 2017," O'Brien told the UN Security Council.
The Security Council called on the warring parties to "allow safe, rapid and unhindered access" for aid, including food, and noted the "widespread and acute malnutrition on the verge of famine."
Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, said the Arab peninsula's poorest country had only three months
left of wheat stocks and that was also likely to be the case for other key food grains such as rice.
"If we have only got three months supply, there is a possibility there will be a gap for a period of time," he said on the sidelines of a Yemen aid forum in London this week.
"One of the big concerns is how do we get liquidity into the system to allow people like importers to bring in these key commodities?," he said. "What happens next, no one is quite sure."
McGoldrick said an "informal economy" generated some food, but it was not enough to meet the basic needs of the population.
In the past, the UN has repeatedly raised alarm over the fighting in the poverty-stricken nation, sending out a special envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, to mediate in the conflict between Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government. However, with the Saudi military backing the cabinet and Iran allegedly arming the Houthis, the conflict has evolved into an arm wrestling match between two rival regional powers.
Hadi refusing to discuss peace plan
UN officials have accused both parties of hindering the delivery of aid. The Saudi-led coalition was also under fire for bombing the airport in Sana and the key Hudaydah port, in the country heavily dependant on imports.
Speaking before the UN on Thursday, peace envoy Ahmed slammed Yemen's president Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi for rejecting his proposed plan for peace.
"President Hadi continues to criticize the proposals without agreeing to discuss them and this will hinder and impede the path towards peace," he told the council.
However, the Yemen's UN Ambassador Khaled Alyemany restated that his government refuses to accept the Houthi "coup d'etat in any way or form," adding that rebel leaders "must accept a restoration of "constitutional legitimacy" and Hadi's presidency.
"Any other initiative or idea will be unacceptable and irrational because it will not bring about peace," Alyemany said. "It will only bring about superficial solutions and the crisis will continue."
