Yemen: One in two children severely malnourished after 10 years of war

“We need to move fast,” said UNICEF representative in the country Peter Hawkins. “I was in Hudaydah over the past three days…I went through the western lowlands, where there are people on the streets, on the side of the roads, begging and looking for assistance. They have given up. We cannot give up.”

Speaking from Yemen’s capital Sana’a, Mr. Hawkins told reporters that the “manmade” disaster has decimated Yemen’s economy, healthcare system and infrastructure.

“Even during periods of reduced violence, the structural consequences of the conflict, especially for girls and boys, have remained severe,” he said, underscoring that more than half of the country’s population of close to 40 million people relies on humanitarian assistance.

Aid lifeline under threat

UNICEF supports life-saving health facilities and malnutrition treatment across the country, but its activities are only 25 per cent funded this year. The agency will not be able to sustain even minimal services without urgent action from donors, Mr. Hawkins warned.

Houthi rebels – formally known as Ansar Allah – have been battling Government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition for more than a decade and overthrew the country’s President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in March 2015.

While a resumption of large-scale ground military operations in Yemen has not occurred since the UN-mediated truce of April 2022, military activity continues. 

The Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen Hans Grundberg warned on 6 March in a briefing to the Security Council that the cessation of hostilities is increasingly at risk. 

Earlier this month the United States launched multiple strikes on Houthi-controlled areas in the country, reportedly in retaliation for the Houthis’ continued targeting of merchant and commercial vessels in the Red Sea following the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire.

Mr. Hawkins spoke of the damage he witnessed first-hand in the port city of Hudaydah and stressed that eight children died in the most recent airstrikes across northern Yemen.

Food, medicines blocked

“Critical ports and roads, lifelines for food and medicine, are damaged and blockaded,” Mr. Hawkins said. Food prices have soared over 300 per cent in the past decade, driving hunger and malnutrition.

The UNICEF official said that one in two children under the age of five is malnourished in Yemen, “a statistic that is almost unparalleled across the world”.

“Among them are over 540,000 girls and boys who are severely and acutely malnourished, a condition that is agonizing, life-threatening and entirely preventable,” he added.

‘Thousands will die’

Mr. Hawkins highlighted the dangers facing children who cannot access treatment, as they are “away from service delivery in the most remote areas up on the mountains, and deep down in the in the valleys of northern Yemen…Malnutrition weakens immune systems, stunts growth and robs children of their potential.”

Furthermore, some 1.4 million pregnant and lactating women are malnourished in Yemen – “a vicious circle of intergenerational suffering”, Mr. Hawkins said.

In certain areas including the west of the country, severe and acute malnutrition rates of 33 per cent have been recorded.

“It’s not a humanitarian crisis. It’s not an emergency. It is a catastrophe where thousands will die,” Mr. Hawkins insisted.