UN cuts food aid, leaving millions of Yemenis starving.

• WFP has announced more drastic cuts to food aid in Yemen.
• Yemen’s population is in need of food as they are caught in a war and an economic downturn.
• Russian invasion of Ukraine and India’s wheat export risk worsening Yemen’s hunger problem.

Millions of Yemenis, who are already suffering from war, may no longer be able to access enough food as the World Food Programme (WFP) has announced more drastic cuts to food aid in Yemen.

The World Food Program (WFP) claimed on Sunday that it was compelled to restrict food due to a lack of money, the state of the global economy, and the ongoing repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Thirteen million Yemenis get food aid from the WFP, but due to recent cuts, it will only be able to meet the needs of five million of them, while the remaining eight million will only receive 25% of what they need daily.

At least 17.4 million people, or more than half of Yemen’s population, are in need of food aid because they are caught between a lengthy war and an economic downturn.

The organisation claimed on Twitter that it had been forced to make some extremely difficult decisions about the support it offers to its beneficiaries due to “critical financial deficits, global inflation, and the knock-on impacts of the war in #Ukraine.”

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In addition, “resilience and livelihood activities, and school feeding and nutrition programmes” would be curtailed for four million people, leaving them available for only 1.8 million people, according to the WFP, the United Nations’ (UN) food assistance arm.

The UN has dubbed Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe as the worst in the world as a result of nearly eight years of fighting between government forces supported by Saudi Arabia and Houthi rebels.

Due to a lack of funding, earlier reductions in WFP food aid were announced at the end of 2021; however, the UN was only able to secure a fifth of the $2 billion it had estimated it would require from international donors this year for Yemen.

In 2022, over 19 million Yemenis, up from the current 17.4 million, are expected to require food assistance. 7.3 million of them will experience hunger at an emergency level.

Approximately 2.3 million children under the age of five are already malnourished in Yemen, and 400,000 more children are anticipated to experience severe malnutrition that poses a life-threatening risk in the near future, according to UNICEF.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and India’s wheat export embargo risk worsening Yemen’s hunger problem and raising food prices, which have already doubled in some regions of the country in only two years.

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in support of the government in 2015 after Houthi rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa in 2014. This forced the government to flee.

Yemen’s economy has crumbled in the midst of a Saudi-led coalition blockade of its principal ports, which is restricting the entry of non-essential goods as well as food and fuel.

The transport of petroleum and supplies across the nation has also been limited by conflict parties, including the Houthis and the Yemeni government.

The planning minister of the Saudi-backed administration issued a warning on Friday that Yemen’s wheat supply would run out by mid-July and pleaded with EU member states to assist find new markets for wheat to replace Russian and Ukrainian supplies.

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