DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The
UN’s World Food Program has announced further reductions of food aid to
war-torn Yemen as a result of funding gaps, price rises, and the fallout from
the Ukraine war.
اضافة اعلان
“Critical funding gaps, global inflation and the
knock-on effects of the war in Ukraine have forced WFP in Yemen to make some
extremely tough decisions about the support we provide to our beneficiaries,”
the food aid program tweeted Sunday.
As a result, it said, it had to drastically scale
back assistance for 13 million Yemenis who receive emergency food aid in the
country that the
UN says is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“We are now being driven to scale back that support
for five million of those people to less than 50 percent of the daily
requirement, and for the other eight million to around 25 percent of the daily
requirement,” the WFP said.
“Resilience and livelihood activities, and school
feeding and nutrition programs will cease for four million people, leaving
assistance available for only 1.8 million people,” it added.
Yemen’s seven-year conflict has killed more than
150,000 people and displaced millions of civilians, according to the UN.
Warring parties in the impoverished country renewed
earlier this month a two-month truce that began in April and that aid agencies
and Western governments say has significantly reduced fighting.
But the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen,
David Gressly, previously warned that the humanitarian situation is worsening in the
country, saying almost three quarters of the population is in need of
assistance.
“WFP is acutely aware of the devastating impact of
the cuts on Yemen’s poorest and most needy families and we do not take their
plight lightly,” the UN’s food aid arm added.
Yemen’s conflict broke out in 2014, when Iran-backed
Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to
intervene the following year to prop up the internationally-recognized
government.
The already food insecure country is particularly vulnerable
to spiraling global food and energy prices as a result of
Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine in February.
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