Poverty, Hunger, Disease Exacerbated Amid Catastrophic US-Saudi War on Yemen

On Apr 5, 2022

Since the outbreak of the US-Saudi aggression in March 2015, the Yemeni economy has sustained heavy economic losses that exceed $100 billion in initial estimates. The economic war waged by the coalition forces has also greatly contributed to making Yemen the largest and worst humanitarian disaster in a century, according to United Nations reports.

Yemen is facing a major deterioration in all economic fields, especially in light of the continuing war and siege. Amid an administrative and financial corruption, and the growing struggle of coalition mercenaries to loot the wealth in the Saudi-UAE occupied governorates with the collapse of the Yemeni currency, Yemeni citizens faced the worst economic war in the world.

Homelessness, poverty exacerbate

The seven-year war has left economic and humanitarian catastrophes, and almost every day, Yemeni citizens lose their ability to obtain food and shelter and move on to a life of displacement and poverty.

According to the report of the International Organization for Migration, tens of thousands have been displaced seeking shelter. During the period from January to September last year, 64,000 people were displaced as a result of the fighting in the vicinity of the city of Marib, and 25,000 displaced people were displaced in Hodeidah governorate in November 2021.

According to press statements by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, about 50,000 Yemenis are already living in famine-like conditions, while 5 million people are one step away from this situation.

The United Nations Development Program issued on September 8, 2019, confirmed that Yemen will become the poorest country in the world if the conflict continues until 2022, because Yemen will then suffer from the largest poverty gap in the world (The distance between the average income and the poverty line).

The UN report said: “The past four years of war in Yemen have led to an increase in the poverty rate from 47% in 2014 to 75% at the end of 2019.

The United Nations report confirmed that Yemen will be classified as the poorest country in the world, because the poverty rate will rise significantly, as 79% of the population will live below the poverty line, 65% will live in extreme poverty, and 84% will suffer from malnutrition, according to the report.

The report pointed out that the high rate of poverty in Yemen and the collapse of the national economy, which has recorded a loss of activity worth $89 billion since 2015, are due to factors attributed to the war and siege.

The UN report indicated that the war in Yemen disrupted government institutions and commercial markets, and destroyed the country’s infrastructure, indicating that the per capita gross domestic product decreased from $3,577 to $1,950.

The report of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that 24 million Yemenis have become dependent for their lives on humanitarian aid provided by donor countries and international organizations.

According to a UN report published by the British newspaper “The Independent” at the end of May 2017, the war and siege imposed by the coalition forces were a major cause of the collapse of the economy and famine in Yemen.

Economic war

The US-Saudi aggression is waging the most deadly war against the Yemeni people. It is the economic war and the war of starvation, the ugliest face of the war on Yemen!

The coalition countries deliberately, through their economic war against the Yemeni people, pushed the national economy to the bottom of the deterioration. They tightened the siege policy, destroyed infrastructure and economic facilities, printed more currencies in Russia without a financial cover, and plundered the country’s oil and minerals wealth. They also weakened industrial and agricultural productive capacities, and oil, livestock and fisheries wealth, and imposed stifling restrictions against food commodities, medicines, infant formula and oil derivatives imports.

Forgotten Yemen

On the other side of this exorbitant bill for the war, the international community’s interest in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen has also begun to dwindle. United Nations Secretary-General Guterres expressed his disappointment after the donors’ conference to collect donations to fund relief operations in Yemen in 2021, where the total donations amounted to only one billion seven hundred million dollars, compared to three billion dollars Eight hundred million dollars that the United Nations was seeking to reach through the conference.

The Russian-Ukrainian war also contributed a lot to the growing dwindling of the international community’s attention to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, as the West harnessed all its capabilities to support the Ukrainians in their war against the Russians.

The international media no longer talks about the humanitarian catastrophe and the crimes committed against the Yemeni people on a daily basis as a result of the outbreak of war in the farthest corner of Europe between Russia and Ukraine.

The actual indifference of the world’s major powers is exposing millions of Yemenis to starvation and disease if peace is not brought to the country as soon as possible, said the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Agency.