UN warns Yemen on the verge of famine

"We are now in a countdown to a disaster," the head of the World Food Program of the International Organization said in a briefing to the Security Council, David Beasley. "We reached that before, and we sounded the alarm then."

"If we choose to turn a blind eye, I have no doubt that Yemen will plummet into devastating famine within a few months," Beasley told the 15-member Security Council.

The United Nations aid official, Mark Lowcock, told the council “When I think about what famine would mean, I am really at a loss to understand why more is not being done to prevent, it is a terrible, agonizing and humiliating death ... Yemenis are not ‘going hungry’. They are being starved.”

Lowcock added, "We prevented famine about two years ago, the fastest and most effective way to support immunization prevention efforts now is to pump more money," and emphasized that the international organization received less than half of what it needed.

It is noteworthy that the United Nations warned in late 2017 that Yemen was facing "the largest famine in the world for many decades, with millions of victims," ​​and the United Nations describes Yemen as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 80 percent of its population in need of assistance.

T/S

ANHA