Sanaa: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday that half of Yemen's children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, with more than 543,000 facing severe acute malnutrition.
According to Kuwait News Agency, UNICEF's Representative in Yemen, Peter Hawkins, highlighted during an online press briefing from Sanaa in Geneva that four million pregnant and lactating women are also malnourished, creating a vicious cycle of human suffering and health deterioration across generations. He emphasized that this catastrophe is "man-made" as the humanitarian crisis in the country enters its tenth year.
Hawkins noted that more than half of Yemen's population depends on humanitarian aid, especially given the sharp rise in food import prices, which have soared by 300 percent over the past decade. He explained that ten years of conflict have devastated Yemen's economy and essential infrastructure, including ports and critical roadways, which serve as lifelines for food and medicine, leading to "an unprecedented deterioration in the humanitarian situation."
Hawkins called for urgent funding of USD 157 million to support UNICEF's humanitarian response in Yemen for 2025, noting that only 25 percent of the required funding has been secured so far. He further stressed the need for ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access and called for the immediate release of detained UN staff and other humanitarian workers.