Beirut: International donors pledged about $1.35 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen on Tuesday, far short of the $2.4 billion the United Nations had said was needed to pull a country shredded by years of war, hunger and disease from the brink of further disaster.
Mark Lowcock, the United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator, was blunt about the results of the donor conference, which was hosted, virtually, by Saudi Arabia.
“We cannot be satisfied where we got to today,” he said. In addition, he noted that the money raised had not yet been paid, only promised.
Funding had withered this year over donors’ concerns that Al Houthis, the Iran-backed armed group that controls northern Yemen, were interfering with aid distributed in their territory.
UN officials warned that without more donations, nearly 400 hospitals and health care centres it finances would have to reduce services just as the coronavirus pandemic has surged in Yemen. Already, food rations have been halved for 8.5 million hungry Yemenis, and 10,000 health care workers have lost the UN payments that for many are their only salary, Grande said.
“Yemenis themselves say things are worse today than at any time in their recent history,” Lowcock said in his appeal to donors, asking “whether the world is prepared to watch Yemen fall off the cliff.”
Though COVID-19 deaths appear to be multiplying quickly across Yemen, Yemeni authorities have done little to check the virus’s spread. Al Houthis, in the north, have denied the outbreak’s existence.
