In ‘Starvation Makers’, a joint report released last week, Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana) and Global Rights Compliance (GRC) found that members of the warring parties in Yemen – the Saudi/UAE-led Coalition, acting with the support of the Yemeni government, and the Ansar Allah (Houthi) armed group – have used starvation as a method of warfare.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than half of the 233,000 conflict-related deaths in Yemen are from indirect causes, including disrupted access to food and inadequate healthcare.
An historically food insecure country, Yemen has faced increasing levels of acute food shortages almost every year since the conflict began in 2014. By this year, around 400,000 children were at risk of death from starvation even with humanitarian intervention, and 16.2 million people faced acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme. Based on figures reported by the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) system, which classifies the severity and magnitude of food insecurity and malnutrition, those most affected are in Hajjah, Al-Hudaydah, Saada and Taiz governorates, where different warring parties have control.
