MEE: Yemenis do not need a fundraising conference, they need the war to end

As the spread of coronavirus exacerbates Yemen’s crisis, Western governments must take a firm stance with Saudi Arabia to end the fighting.

Saudi Arabia co-hosted a United Nations fundraising conference this week for aid operations in Yemen. The kingdom’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said his country “supports the UN efforts to reach a political solution in Yemen to alleviate the suffering and support humanitarian, economic and developmental aspects”.

According to Middle East Eye (MEE), the Implying that it cares about Yemenis is ironic for Saudi Arabia, which has been intervening militarily in Yemen for more than half a decade.

“After destroying Yemen, Saudi Arabia is co-hosting a fundraising summit for Yemen. This is the height of moral hypocrisy,” Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, told MEE. “What is equally outrageous is that the United Nations is legitimising this exercise in political theatre.

“Let’s not forget that for the past five years, MBS [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] has been spending $5-6bn per month on Yemen. For a fraction of this money, Yemen could have been rebuilt into a prosperous nation.”

The Yemeni people do not need a fundraising conference. They need the war and the fighting to stop.

Saudi Arabia has been prolonging the war, yet has failed to achieve its military goals or to put forward a plan to end the conflict. Without a roadmap to end this devastating war, things are unlikely to improve for the Yemeni people, who deserve to live in lasting peace.

Yemen is in the midst of a serious humanitarian crisis. Since the start of a cholera outbreak three years ago, there have been more than 2.3 million suspected cases of the disease. Last year, UN World Food Programme spokesperson Herve Verhoosel said that around 20 million Yemenis were food insecure, and “nearly 10 million of them are one step away from famine”.

This crisis has largely unfolded because of the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project: “Since 2015, the Saudi-led coalition and its allies are responsible for over 8,000 of the approximately 11,700 fatalities reported in connection with direct targeting of civilians in Yemen.”

The death toll from fighting is at least 100,000, with tens of thousands more dying due to disease and malnutrition caused by the war. Last year the UN projected a death toll of 233,000 by 2020, with 60 percent of the victims under five years old.