RI: Protecting Yemen's Children from Famine

The rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen captured the world’s attention in 2018, boosting calls among the international community for peace. The year ended with the first round of UN-led peace consultations in Sweden, which signaled a major step towards peace and renewed chance to hope for the future of Yemen. However, despite these recent developments, the situation on the ground where Relief International operates remains largely unchanged.

The number of people facing famine in the country rose from 8.5 million to nearly 17 million in the past year. Today, more than half of the country’s population do not get enough to eat, forcing 8.4 million people to rely on emergency food aid for survival. Behind these statistics are real people who have experienced extreme food insecurity, malnutrition, cholera, diphtheria and a host of other life-threatening issues for the past five years. Relief International has worked in Yemen since 2009 – prior to the onset of the conflict – to deliver critical services to families in the most remote corners of the country.

In response to intensifying famine-like conditions, our teams on the ground scaled up our long-standing programs to deliver a comprehensive approach to the country’s worsening food insecurity and health crises. Through the distribution of vouchers and direct cash support, RI teams provide nearly 450,000 people across Yemen with life-saving aid to ensure they have enough to eat each month. We employ a rigorous, independently-verified beneficiary selection process and have pioneered the use of biometric registration in Yemen to minimize opportunity for error or tampering. We work closely with the authorities and community-level leaders in Yemen to run a transparent process of registration and aid distribution. In addition, RI supports 134 primary healthcare facilities and 13 mobile medical teams that provide medical care and nutrition services to more than 1.2 million people across war-torn Yemen. Despite the hardships on the ground, our medical teams work to combat the symptoms of severe and acute malnutrition, particularly in children, reinforcing the work of our food aid programs.

As we move forward into 2019, there remains much work to be done to keep Yemenis back from the brink of starvation.  Despite recent steps taken by the international community towards achieving peace, the crisis in Yemen is far from over. Hunger and malnutrition persist at an alarming rate, and will continue to ravage the country until a real, sustainable solution is reached. Your generous support is allowing RI to provide Yemeni families with the support they need to survive this conflict. But, your generosity goes beyond survival: it helps to plan for their future, ensuring that Yemeni families can start to look toward the day when they recover from these unspeakable hardships with the safety and dignity they deserve.

Ongoing violence against Yemen’s main port city of Hodeidah threatens to plunge the country into famine. A lifeline for aid, the port of Hodeidah is the entry point for at least 70 percent of all humanitarian assistance into Yemen. As military offensives continue to pummel the port, international aid agencies warn that 20 million Yemenis – more than two-thirds of the country’s population –are at risk of losing the humanitarian aid they have come to rely on to survive.

As the situation on the ground deteriorates, RI teams are working to stave off intense, famine-like conditions by delivering critical assistance to the country’s most vulnerable residents. Soaring food prices coupled with a tumbling economy too often prevents families from purchasing nutritious foods like vegetables, fruit, dairy, or meat products. Instead, skipping meals to conserve limited food rations has become a commonplace, yet heartbreaking, reality for millions of Yemenis.

We’re working alongside our partners to provide critical food assistance and nutritional support to families in need. Through our general food voucher distribution program, we’ve provided more than 7,000 families each month with vouchers, which they can redeem at local vendors for oil, flour, lentils, sugar, and other life-saving staples. We’ve also upgraded our level of support from 5Kgs to 10Kgs to prevent families from having to self-ration. Our mobile health clinics continue to treat acute and severe cases of malnutrition, helping to restore more than 108,000 children’s health through supplementary feeding programs.

As the conflict converges around Hodeidah, hunger in Yemen is expected to skyrocket to unprecedented levels. If there is any disruption to the aid pipeline, millions of lives will be forced closer to the brink of starvation, and even death. Our teams are monitoring the fragile situation in Hodeidah closely and have already begun delivering assistance to displaced families fleeing the city.

Together, with your generous support, we can help to deliver emergency rations of food, water, medicine, and other necessities to vulnerable Yemeni families, helping them to survive this latest assault with the dignity and support they deserve.