People gather in the site of an airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, on November 11, 2017. The Saudi-led coalition has been bombing northern Yemen for several days. Mohammed Mohammed/Press Association. All rights reserved. Yemen is finally making the headlines of mainstream media in UK. Why now? Since early this year, UN and other humanitarian agencies working in Yemen warned the world that the country is about to suffer an unprecedented famine. Earlier this was discussed alongside the expected famines in Africa. In recent months little has been heard about any of them while the situation continued to deteriorate.
At the outset, readers need to remember that the UN’s 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan only intends to reach 7 million people with its emergency assistance, although it estimates that 21 million are in need: it is only hoping to reach one third of people needing help. This is partly due to the lack of funds: as of mid-November, 1.5 months before the end of the year, it had received only 57% of the funds required to reach this small percentage of desperate Yemenis.
When looking at UN and other humanitarian achievements, it is important to remember how many of the millions of Yemenis are not even targeted by assistance from the international community as a whole, which means us as Northern taxpayers, among others.
