UN conference for Yemen seeks funds for $4b target in 2019: UAE to donate $500 million

Young yemeni boy — Yemen is facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis Image Credit: REUTERS

GENEVA - The United Nations opened a third pledging conference Tuesday in hopes of drumming up $4 billion this year for Yemen, a war-battered country facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Host U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented "an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe" where some 24 million people, or four-fifths of Yemen's total population, require aid and protection.

"Twenty million people cannot reliably feed themselves or their families," he said in Geneva, where the meeting is taking place. "Almost 10 million are just one step away from famine."

U.N. officials say they are running out of money in a country also facing a devastated health care system, a lack of jobs, continued fighting and fallout from the world's worst cholera epidemic in 2017.

The world body's "Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen" in 2019 seeks $4 billion to reach 15 million people across the country, after raising nearly $2.6 billion last year.

Two of the biggest donors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are also active participants in the conflict. They lead a Western-backed coalition that supports the internationally recognized Yemeni government against Iran-aligned rebels known as Houthis.

Saudi Arabia and UAE ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars on Tuesday.

The air campaign and ground battles have killed over 60,000 civilians and combatants, displaced some 3 million people, and pushed the country to the brink of famine. Save the Children has estimated that more than 80,000 children under 5 have died of hunger or disease.

Aid warehouse reached

The UN said Tuesday it had reached a food aid warehouse on the frontlines in Yemen, holding enough supplies to feed millions of people, for the first time since September.

"I have just received a piece of good news. Finally, it was possible for us to reach the Red Sea Mills," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a pledging conference for Yemen in Geneva.

A spokesman for the World Food Programme told AFP that it was an evaluation mission that had reached the warehouse near the western port city of Hodeida.