If your knowledge of Yemen was gained entirely from donor briefings and government statements, you might think it was a politically troubled, developmentally challenged country, like Egypt on a bad day.
When the international community was spurred to ‘do something’ about Yemen, following the attempt to take down a United States-bound airliner by a would-be suicide bomber — who apparently trained there — the impulse was not to send over emergency relief, like Ethiopia in 1984, but to set up working groups to investigate Yemen’s complex developmental challenges.
But as donors deliberate the best way to boost the country’s long-term institutional capacity, increasing numbers of its citizens are living on the margins of survival. In the capital, Sanaa, when your car slows down even for a few seconds, thin fingers will inevitably begin tapping on the window begging for money. Poverty and privation is even worse in the countryside.
On a trip to Al Mazraq refugee camp last year, I saw people who had fled the war in the northern province of Saada shouting angrily into the sandy wind that they had nothing — no means of ensuring their own survival. Their situation has since become much worse.
Yemen may superficially be a part of the Middle East — a “middle income” region — but its statistics are in a different league. Child malnutrition rates are second only to Afghanistan, and a recent shortfall in funding to the World Food Program (WFP) means that, quite simply, more children will die this year as their plates go empty.
“We are expecting the moderately malnourished children to fall into a severe malnutrition state, and those who are already severely malnourished will sustain life-long implications,” said Wisam al-Timimi, a nutrition specialist with UNICEF in Yemen. “Their survival will be jeopardized.”
According to the WFP, one in three Yemenis, some 7.2 million people, suffer from chronic hunger and 1.7 million people will become unable to meet their basic nutritional requirements with seasonal food price rises this summer. Lack of funding will force the WFP to withdraw assistance from 80,000 beneficiaries in July, and it has already almost run out of food for the 270,000 internal refugees from the northern conflict — between Houthi insurgents and government forces — who are completely dependent on aid handouts. As of last month, the agency began distributing half rations to trickle out the supply longer.
“Anyone arguing this is a nightmare scenario wouldn’t be wrong,” said one humanitarian expert I spoke to.
Its not just the WFP that is suffering a funding crisis — an appeal for $177 million in humanitarian assistance for Yemen launched by a coalition of international agencies last year has only received around 30 percent of this target.
“It’s puzzling,” said Gian Carlo Cirri, head of the WFP in Yemen. “There’s lots of talk about helping Yemen, but very little money.”
Some speculate that the Haiti earthquake has caused donor fatigue. Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani blamed the government in Sanaa — which disputes the WFP’s findings — for not making food security a high profile issue due to the potential political embarrassment.
“The callous position of the government on the issue of hunger is costing each year more lives than all the wars that Yemen has seen since its founding,” said Iryani. “The most vulnerable group is too powerless to protest.”
Another theory is that humanitarian aid has become the victim of development aid policy concerns .
“Expectations that Western donors would give more money have not materialized,” said the Deputy Finance Minister Hisham Sharaf. Western delegates at a conference held in London after December’s failed bombing attempt didn’t pledge new funds to the country, but instead vowed to direct $5 billion donated following a 2006 conference, much of which remains untouched.
Donor desire to implement a considered development strategy that avoids propping up a system notorious for its corruption and inefficiency is understandable, but the country’s immediate humanitarian needs are too acute to be held hostage by such concerns. This is not only a moral issue, but a strategic one as well.
Protests have already begun in Saada after the announcement of half-rations for internal refugees, and there are fears the $35 million WFP funding shortfall for food supplies to feed these people could destabilize the situation in the north, where a fragile ceasefire is holding.
After all, $35 million is, as Cian Carlo Cirri keeps telling reporters, a relatively cheap price for stability.
ABIGAIL FIELDING-SMITH reports on the Middle East for the Financial Times
