GENEVA: Half of Yemen鈥檚 children under 5 are acutely malnourished and more than half a million suffer from potentially fatal food deprivation, the UN said on Tuesday.
The children鈥檚 agency UNICEF warned that a decade of conflict had stolen childhoods and left an entire generation fighting to survive, and the humanitarian crisis was escalating.
Malnutrition was 鈥渁gonizing, life-threatening, and entirely preventable,鈥� the agency鈥檚 Yemen representative Peter Hawkins said. 鈥淚t weakens immune systems, stunts growth, and robs children of their potential. In Yemen, it is not just a health crisis 鈥� it is a death sentence for thousands.鈥�
US President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid in January and canceled most programs run by the US Agency for International Development. 鈥淭he issue with the USAID cuts is that they diminished the capacity overall here in Yemen quite extensively,鈥� Hawkins said.
While UNICEF has been able to continue nutritional programmes, he said these needed to be complemented by food and cash assistance for an optimum nutritional crisis response, with those areas now compromised. 鈥淎nd therefore it makes our job much more difficult,鈥� he said.
鈥淲ithout urgent resources, we cannot sustain even the minimal services we are able to provide in the face of growing needs. Yemen鈥檚 children cannot wait another decade.鈥�