London: Yemen is urging the international community to boost efforts to tackle its multiple crises of poverty, economic underdevelopment, resource depletion and grave humanitarian problems as it continues fighting a resurgent Al Qaida.

Abu Bakr Al Qirbi, the country’s foreign minister, said that Tuesday’s meeting of the Friends of Yemen forum in London should focus on the economy, unemployment and poverty.

“To stabilise the political situation people need to see the standards of living, jobs and the services they lack,” he told the Guardian. “The Friends of Yemen need to prioritise so we can use the funds that are available wisely.”

The Friends of Yemen, set up in 2010, comprises 40 states and organisations which coordinate international support for the Arab world’s poorest country. It suffers from the second highest malnutrition rates in the world, a lack of water and medicine, weak governance, corruption and grave security problems.

Apart from Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) the target of controversial US drone strikes, it also faces Al Houthi rebels and separatists in the south.

Half of the 24 million population needs some kind of humanitarian assistance, the UN says. Tuesday’s conference is being chaired jointly by Saudi Arabia and Britain.

Yemen, said Al Qirbi, deserved help because unlike other Arab countries where popular uprisings had taken place it had managed to avoid civil war and, with Gulf Arab and western support, launched a successful transition process following the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh after months of protests.

“We need more development, improved security, better economic growth,” he said. “We have about $8b allocated from donors, so far only about 25 per cent of it has been spent. We have to work harder on better implementation.”

The government recently set up an “executive bureau” in Sana’a to absorb aid more efficiently and detail the status of outstanding donor pledges.

Yemen is currently facing severe fuel shortages and there have been reports that the government will not be able to pay its own employees in two months without a massive cash injection.

After conducting a successful national dialogue it is now drawing up a new constitution for a new federal state with elections due next year.

“Yemen is both a forgotten success as well as a forgotten crisis,” Alan Duncan, the UK international development minister, told a pre-conference seminar organised by Oxfam on Monday.

“Back in 2011 it was the transition in Yemen that seemed to be the most fragile and dangerous of the Arab spring. Now it has made more progress than most towards a peaceful political transition.”

But its economic problems are worsening by the day. “While Yemen is wrestling with its new constitution, millions are going hungry, water is running out and dwindling fuel stocks are crippling production ahead of the harvest,” warned Colette Fearon, Oxfam’s Yemen director. “You cannot build a new country without food and water.”

Al Qirbi said Yemeni security forces had not yet determined whether the Aqap leader, Nasser Al Wuhayshi, had been killed in three days of air strikes and drone attacks last week, which left a death toll of around 65 fuelling criticism that counter-terror operations that kill innocent bystanders may end up recruiting more terrorists. DNA tests were being carried out to establish whether he and master bomber Ebrahim Al Asiri had died.

In the last few years the US, Britain and other western countries have focused on the Aqap threat following several attempts to bomb planes. Yemen has become an active frontline for Al Qaida as its Pakistani “core” has been weakened.

“Terrorist attacks in Yemen have a very negative impact on our image,” said Al Qirbi. “It is one of the factors that has contributed to our economic ills because of the lack of investment and because tourism has almost disappeared.

“But the use of force is not the only solution for terrorism. In Yemen we are developing a comprehensive strategy that will look at the growth of terrorism, how people are recruited, funding and how to deal with it from an Islamic perspective, an economic one, and so on.”

Meanwhile, Yemeni civil society groups have protested at being excluded from the Friends of Yemen event.

“The ment London conference has totally ignored Yemen’s civil society and its vital role in the country’s national development,” a statement said.

“This exclusion takes place despite the fact that our organisations have and continue to carry out extremely important development and humanitarian operations perhaps not deliverable either by the governor international humanitarian agencies operating in the country.”