UN agencies confirm that malnutrition threatens half of Yemen’s children under the age of five

UN organizations said on Friday that half of children under the age of five in Yemen would suffer from malnutrition in 2021, and that hundreds of thousands of them may die due to the lack of humanitarian aid.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF”), the World Food Program (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) have warned that “the acute malnutrition threatens half of children under the age of five in Yemen in 2021 ″, and this includes nearly 2.3 million children.

The organizations said in a joint statement that “400,000 of these children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and may die if they do not receive urgent treatment.” This number represents an increase of 22 percent more that it was the year 2020.

UNICEF Director-General Henrietta Fore warned that “every day that passes without action, more children will die.”

Fore added that the humanitarian organizations are in urgent need of predictable resources and unimpeded access to the population on the ground.

The UN organizations have projected that about 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021.

They noted that acute malnutrition levels are among the highest recorded in Yemen since the escalation of the conflict in 2015 when the Saudi-led coalition entered Yemen militarily.

“The crisis in Yemen is a toxic combination of conflict, economic collapse and acute shortage of funds to provide life-saving aid,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley.

UN agencies indicated that the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan for this country received only $ 1.9 billion of the $ 3.4 billion requested.