Foreign Affairs Minister Discusses with UNDP Resident Representative Technical Rehabilitation of Sana’a Airport

Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Sana’a government Engineer Hisham Sharaf Abdullah met on Tuesday with the Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program in Sana’a Auke Lootsma.

During the meeting, they discussed the program activities implemented by the program in Yemen, including the project to rehabilitate Sana’a International Airport in the technical aspects. This will enable it to attract commercial airlines with the aim of resuming their flights to and from Sana’a International Airport.

Minister Sharaf stressed the government’s commitment to provide facilities to ensure the continuity of programs and projects.

He pointed out that addressing the repercussions of the humanitarian catastrophe is the first priority of the Supreme Political Council and the National Salvation Government. Especially ensuring the flow of ships loaded with oil, domestic gas and commercial goods to the port of Hodeidah, the arrival of commercial flights to and from Sana’a International Airport, and the payment of the salaries of state employees without exception.

For his part, the Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program in Sana’a explained the program’s keenness to take into account the human dimension in all its programs, and to provide services and technical advice.

Lootsma called for facilitating the procedures for the arrival of experts specialized in providing technical support to Sana’a International Airport.

Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the claim of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power.

The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The aggression repeatedly bombed Sana’a Airport. The US-Saudi aggression aircraft bombed the airport hall, the Civil Aviation Institute, the quarantine building, the aircraft catering department, and cargo hangars, with a number of air raids that made it completely out of readiness.

Sana’a Airport has been closed to flights since August 9, 2016 by the Saudi-led aggression. In the seven years since, thousands of people may have died prematurely because they were unable to travel abroad for treatment.

Not only bullets and bombs  are killing enough people, the airport closure is condemning thousands more to a premature death.

Sana’a has called repeatedly on the UN to put pressure on the US-Saudi aggression to lift the restrictions on Yemen’s airspace, and to allow medical supplies to be imported and patients in need of treatment to leave from Sana’a airport.

A UN-brokered truce lasted for six months in the seven-year-old war waged by Saudi Arabia and its regional allies supported by US and western countries against Yemen.

The truce, however, expired amid the Saudi-led coalition’s constant violations of the agreement and its refusal to properly lift a siege that it has been enforcing against Yemen since the beginning of the war.

Although the US-Saudi aggression seeks to extend thetruce, it with UN complicity, is still evading the implementation of humanitarian and legal entitlements, foremost of which is the operating of all flights from and out of Sana’a Airport, paying employee salaries and entering fuel ships to the port of Hodeidah, which made Sana’a refuse to extend the temporary truce.