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YEMEN

Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. 24 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, that makes up about 80% of the total population of the country. This humanitarian crisis has hit children the most. Yemen is trapped into a vicious cycle of conflicts and civil wars from the last 5 years. The civil wars and the crisis came into picture after the Arab Spring of 2011, but the matters worsened after 2015. In these 5 years of conflicts and civil wars about 3.6 million people have fled the country.


What made Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis?


It’s been 30 years since 1990, when North and South Yemen unified for good but things didn’t go according to the plans. Since then Yemen has witnessed two brutal civil wars. The First Yemeni Civil War (4th May 1994-7th July 1994) fought between the two Yemeni forces of the pro-union northern and the socialist separatist southern Yemeni states and their supporters. The second civil war (2015-present). In this article I’ll talk about the second civil war of Yemen (2015-present), which pushed the country into the worst humanitarian crisis that the world has ever seen.


The conflict has its roots in the failure of a political transition supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an Arab Spring uprising that forced its long-time authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2011. After the end of the Arab Spring, weak governance of the country’s president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and his failure to tackle attacks by jihadists, ongoing separatist movement in South Yemen and increasing corruption, unemployment and food insecurity, lead to the rise of armed group call Houthis, which moved into the capital city, Sanaa. The Houthi rebel fighters entered Sanaa in September 2014 and took full control over government institutions by January 2015.


The overtaking of Yemeni capital Sanaa didn’t take place overnight. The Houthi movement championed Yemen's Zaidi Shia Muslim minority and had fought a series of rebellions against the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh during the first civil war of Yemen. They took advantage of the new president's weakness by taking control of their northern heartland of Saada province and neighbouring areas. The civilians (including Sunnis) were disillusioned with the transition and supported the Houthis, and in late 2014 and early 2015 the rebels gradually took over the capital Sanaa.


Hadi and other senior government officials fled Yemen after the takeover, leaving behind Yemen-suffering and helpless. Hadi currently spends much of his time in exile in Saudi Arabia.


Shortly after, a Saudi Arabia led multinational coalition (mostly Sunni population country) intervened in the conflict in Yemen in March 2015. They launched a military campaign to take back Houthi-held areas and restore power to Hadi’s government. A series of airstrikes were ordered. Although Iranian government never admits it openly but according to some international relations experts, Iran is fuelling the civil war through giving a backbone to Houthi rebels by providing them arms, modern warfare equipment, money and other support so that they continue fighting against the Hadi’s regime. The conflict has been widely seen as an extension of the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy war and as a means to combat Iranian influence in the region, the United States of America is providing Saudi Arabia and its allies with valuable intelligence and other military support.

The aim of Saudi’s airstrikes is to end the Shia power Iranian influence in Yemen and restore President Hadi’s government. At the start of the war Saudi Arabia’s officials forecast that it would last only a few weeks. But five years of military stalemate have followed. President Hadi's government has established a temporary home in Aden, but it struggles to provide basic services and security and the president continues to be based in Saudi Arabia. The Houthis meanwhile have not been dislodged from Sanaa and north-western Yemen. They have been able to maintain a siege of the third city of Taiz and to launch regular ballistic missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.


Militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the local affiliate of the rival Islamic State group (IS) have taken advantage of the chaos by seizing territory in the south and carrying out deadly attacks, notably in Aden.


Yemen has slowly turned into a battleground for Saudi Arabia and Iran’s proxy war. The war that most don't know about, the war whose seeds were sown during 1979 Iranian Revolution. Well Saudi Arabia and Iran’s proxy war is a very big dispute that needs to be addressed separately, for now let’s continue with Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis.

The current scenario of Yemen:


According to UNICEF there are an estimated 12.3 million children in need of humanitarian assistance. About 2 million children under the age of 5 are malnourished. There are more 1 million people affected by Cholera, among them 25% are children. Nearly 18.8 million people are food insecure. That comprises 60% of the Yemeni population. The COVID-19 couldn’t have hit in an even worse situation. Due to COVID-19, about 2 million children had to drop out of schooling, there has been an emergency created within an emergency in Yemen. Only half of health facilities are functioning, and many that remain operational lack basic equipment like masks and gloves, let alone oxygen and other essential supplies to treat the coronavirus. Yemen is drowning, the 2/3rd of population lacks access to food, safe water, proper sanitation and adequate healthcare facilities.


The population demands hygienic drinking water, adequate medical facilities, proper settlement establishments as most buildings are demolished during the airstrikes. To make the matters worse, conditions in the surrounding region are so poor that more than 2,80,692 refugees and asylum seekers have sought refuge in Yemen, fleeing violence and persecution in Somalia and Ethiopia. A country that isn’t being able to carry its own burden now has to support others too who seek shelter and help.


Yemen needs funds to rebuild and repair itself but more than funds it needs our attention and support. Supporting by just donations isn’t enough. We need to use our knowledge, innovative skills and more importantly we need to push ourselves to the frontline to help people. People have been subjected to Human Rights violations, the children are being robbed of their futures and the world is silent.


How is the world standing by Yemen’s side?


Since the beginning of the conflict in 2015, the European Union has allocated €484 million in humanitarian aid to the Yemen crisis. In 2020, a total of €115 million was allocated to humanitarian organisations to support life-saving efforts. In addition, the EU supports the United Nations Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS), which provide reliable air and sea transportation to humanitarian aid workers. The service has been temporarily banned from operating due to the coronavirus pandemic.


· Each month, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) distributes 100,000 metric tons of food commodities at more than 5,000 points, reaching more than 8 million Yemenis.


· The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Children’s fund (UNICEF) have reached more than 3000,000 people with cholera vaccines.


· The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has provided sexual and reproductive health services to 250,000 girls and women.


· The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) works closely with the government and humanitarian partners at all levels to enhance coordination.

Yemen is at war and the numbers don’t allow us to close our eyes to the suffering. There are about 862,000 displaced people living in camps across Yemen. They remain vulnerable to heavy rains and COVID-19. An estimated 3000,000 people in Yemen have lost their homes, crops, livestock, and personal belongings in the last three months due to torrential rains and severe flash floods.


“The Yemenis are in a situation where everyone is in survival mode.”

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