صراط عشق صراط عشق
SANA’A (Dispatches) – The United Nations has warned that three-quarters of the aid programs backed by its agencies in war-ravaged Yemen will have to shutter in weeks without more funding, even as both COVID-19 and cholera continue to spread in the country facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
International donors pledged $1.35bn for Yemen at a conference on June 2 – but that was well below a $2.4bn fundraising target needed to prevent severe cutbacks in the UN’s aid operation.
“More than 30 of the 41 UN-supported programs in Yemen will close in the coming weeks if additional funds are not secured,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing in Geneva.
“Now, more than ever, the country needs the outside world’s help, and it’s not really getting it,” he said.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.S. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said only 47 percent of the promised $1.35bn had actually been received.
Yemen has so far reported 564 confirmed coronavirus infections and 130 related deaths, but the figures lag and may not include all cases, Colville said.
The challenging situation is compounded by the country’s extremely limited testing capacity. According to data compiled by the International Rescue Committee, Yemen has one of the world’s lowest testing rates, even compared with other conflict-hit countries, at just 31 tests per million citizens.
Meanwhile, some 137,000 cases of cholera and diarrhoea have been recorded this year, nearly a quarter of them in children below five, according to the UN.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.
International donors pledged $1.35bn for Yemen at a conference on June 2 – but that was well below a $2.4bn fundraising target needed to prevent severe cutbacks in the UN’s aid operation.
“More than 30 of the 41 UN-supported programs in Yemen will close in the coming weeks if additional funds are not secured,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing in Geneva.
“Now, more than ever, the country needs the outside world’s help, and it’s not really getting it,” he said.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.S. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said only 47 percent of the promised $1.35bn had actually been received.
Yemen has so far reported 564 confirmed coronavirus infections and 130 related deaths, but the figures lag and may not include all cases, Colville said.
The challenging situation is compounded by the country’s extremely limited testing capacity. According to data compiled by the International Rescue Committee, Yemen has one of the world’s lowest testing rates, even compared with other conflict-hit countries, at just 31 tests per million citizens.
Meanwhile, some 137,000 cases of cholera and diarrhoea have been recorded this year, nearly a quarter of them in children below five, according to the UN.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.
