Oxfam: Starvation of Yemen Hasn’t Ended

Rasa - Despite a modest easing of the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of Yemen over the last month, the civilian population is still being starved of essential goods, as Oxfam reported that Yemen is still being starved to death.

News ID: 436098

Date: 29 January 2018 - 19:37

RNA - “Despite a month-long suspension of the blockade, millions of Yemenis are still starved of food. The US must act now to prevent even further deterioration of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” Oxfam America Senior Humanitarian Policy Advisor Scott Paul said, Yemen Extra reported.

The coalition blockade was already contributing significantly to the famine and cholera crises in the country before it was tightened in November, and Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe will continue to get worse as long as the coalition impedes the delivery of aid and commercial goods.

Short of a full and permanent lifting of the blockade, Yemeni civilians will continue to be cruelly deprived of essential goods and countless lives will be lost to preventable starvation and disease.

So long as the US enables the Saudi-led war on Yemen, the coalition will continue to starve and wreck Yemen.

The world’s worst humanitarian crisis isn’t getting any better, and it cannot be ended under current conditions. The Saudis and their allies are still trying to strangle Yemen into submission, and we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that they have relented if they briefly relax their grip.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had described the war in Yemen as a “war on children”, given the extensive damage that the conflict has caused to children in Yemen.

The UN's humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock stressed that People in war-torn Yemen are facing a situation that "looks like the Apocalypse", warning that the country could become the worst humanitarian disaster in half a century.

The United Nations said in mid-January, more than three-quarters of Yemenis are now in need of humanitarian aid as the brutal aggression launched by the Saudi-led coalition nears its fourth year.

Some 8.4 million people are at risk of famine, up from 6.8 million in 2017, the UN Humanitarian Affairs office (OCHA) stressed, saying a total of 22.2 million people, or 76 percent of Yemen’s population of 29 million, are dependent on some form of assistance, an increase of 1.5 million people over the past six months.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive President Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 15,500 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

The Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has driven the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster, as Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, according to several reports.

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.

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