Yemen: world's worst humanitarian crisis, gets worse

The conflict in Yemen began in 2004 when the government placed a $55,000 bounty on the head of former parliament member and religious leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. For ten years, the conflict was largely confined to northwest Yemen. The conflict turned into a full scale civil war and humanitarian crisis in 2014 when Houthi rebels took control of the the nation’s capital city of Sanaa.

According to the UN, over the past month, more than 15,000 additional Yemenites have been displaced by an increase in fighting. The UN also estimated that in the same time, over 350 people have been killed or injured.

The humanitarian crisis caused by the ongoing civil war involves a number of structural factors including a ravished economy, under funded social and health programs, and starvation. UNICEF spokesman, James Elder, said that the hunger problem in Yemen has less to do with the availability of food, and more to do with the people’s means to obtain it.

Elder said, “They are starving because adults continue to wage a war in which children are the biggest losers…Yemen is the most difficult place in the world to be a child. And it is getting worse.”

Over the past year, food prices have roughly doubled across the country. This inflation is all but certain to get worse as over half of Yemen’s food supplies are imported and about a third of that food is imported from Ukraine. The war between Russia and Ukraine is also expected to create a surge in the region’s wheat prices.