UN funding shortage to cut 4 million Yemenis' food supply
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Many of those affected by the shortage are women and children already suffering from the highest malnutrition rates in the world.
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A father gives water to his malnourished daughter at a feeding center in a hospital in Hodeida, Yemen, on Sept. 27, 2018. (AP)
More than four million Yemenis would get less food aid due to financing shortfalls, exacerbating one of the world's greatest humanitarian crises, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned on Friday.
According to the World Food Programme, "a deeper funding crisis for its Yemen operations from the end of September onward... will force WFP to make difficult decisions about further cuts to our food assistance programs across the country in the coming months."
It is expected that without fresh financing, more than four million people will get less food aid, many of whom are women and children who already have some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world.
With significant cuts announced across many programs, the real number of persons affected may be greater.
Richard Ragan, the WFP's representative for Yemen, remarked, "We are confronted with the incredibly tough reality of making decisions to take food from the hungry to feed the starving," adding that the UN agency was "fully cognizant of the suffering these cuts will cause."
Yemen is already reeling from years of a brutal war that left thousands displaced and impoverished.
See this: Eight Years of War on Yemen: Journalism Statistics
"Two out of three Yemenis are currently suffering from food insecurity, i.e., about 19 million people," the Director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross, Martin Schüepp, said on X during his visit to Yemen last October.
