“Yemen is on the verge of a true, deep humanitarian disaster,” were the words late last month of Geert Cappelaere, representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the country. Even in this country with a history struggling through strife and conflict, the current situation is accelerating into a catastrophe without precedent. A third of Yemenis go to bed hungry — roughly 7.5 million people — while half of all children under five-years-old suffer from chronic malnutrition and half the population lives in deep poverty. The World Food Program (WFP) warned that it needs $56 million for its operations this year in Yemen — equal to around one third of American military assistance to the Yemeni government in 2010. While millions of Yemenis are unable to sleep for hunger still more are kept awake by the increasingly bitter civil war. Heavy explosions and bombings continue in Sanaa and other
