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| A health worker treats a child showing symptoms of malnutrition at a therapeutic feeding centre in al-Buraiqa, on the western outskirts of Aden, Yemen, on September 22, 2026 [Abdulnasser Alseddik/AP Photo] |
Title: How hunger is devastating Yemen's children
Author: Not identified in the retrieved article
Publication: Al Jazeera
Date: 6 October 2026
Click here for the article
Summary: More than 2.2 million children under five in Yemen are acutely malnourished, including 516,157 with severe malnutrition, while the country’s 2026 humanitarian response plan is only 20.6 percent funded. Reporting from displacement camps, clinics and hospitals documents children’s treatment and continuing exposure to war, poverty and displacement, while funding shortages have prioritised life-saving treatment over prevention and reduced the World Food Programme’s coverage from 122 districts to 62. The investigation also examines expenditure in individual aid projects and recounts the death of eight-year-old Tahani, whose father said she died of hunger.
Quotes:
“But a child saved in the clinic often returns to the same conditions that caused the problem.”
“UNICEF said the shortfall in funding has forced programmes to prioritise life-saving treatment over prevention and has limited access to children in the areas most in need.”
“It can save lives, but it cannot restore salaries, jobs or public services, or end the war economy.”
Fouad, thank you for sharing this heartbreaking story. But the responsibility of those exploiting these children deserves far more attention.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an account of only insufficient donor generosity. Amnesty International documented aid workers’ accounts of Houthi officials demanding bribes to approve moving humanitarian aid, and fighters extracting food supplies at checkpoints. They used starving children as a source of revenue.
In a Reuters interview in June 2019, David Beasley of WFP estimated that at least 10% of its monthly food aid was being diverted in Houthi areas to help fund the conflict. His conclusion was devastating: “At this stage, you can clearly say the humanitarian system is funding military and political operations.”
An Associated Press investigation subsequently found that senior Houthi aid officials were receiving overlapping salaries from three UN agencies amounting to $10,000 a month each. Children went hungry while the officials controlling humanitarian access collected salaries from the UN.
The children must be helped. But every appeal for more money should be accompanied by more forceful demands for access, independent monitoring and accountability.
Where is the outrage against those who turn access to starving children into a business? Compassion for the victims should make us more demanding of the perpetrators, not more reluctant to name them.
Sadly, those familiar with large humanitarian operations know this phenomenon is not unique to Yemen.
Sorry, the above should not have been anonymous; it came from me.
DeleteSorry about all these corrections. I should have added " in conflict situations" in the last sentence.
Delete