Funding Gap Forces Aid Agencies To Make Tough Decisions In Yemen

4/14/2023 2:11:34 PM

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Français (fr) face au manque de financement pour le yémen, les humanitaires doivent faire des choix difficiles

An exchange of nearly 900 prisoners from Yemen's deadly civil war is startingexternal link on Friday. It follows a round of talks in the capital, Sanaa, earlier this week between Saudi and Yemeni officials aimed at ending hostilities. While encouraging, these steps will not immediately alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country, for which funding is drying up.

“What our humanitarian workers will have to decide is: which camp to feed, which one not to feed; which families will get shelter, which ones will be cast aside?” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an Oslo-based NGO. The lack of funding for the NRC's operations in Yemen will force its team on the ground to make tough choices.“We're still running on some of the money we got last year, but the pipeline is now nearly depleted,” Egeland says.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is one of the worst in the world. The United Nations estimates that 21.6 million people in the country, more than two-thirds of the population, require humanitarian assistance to cover basic needs such as food, healthcare and education. The UN World Food Programme (WFP), which runs one of its largest operations in Yemen, says 17 million people are food insecure, of whom six million are on the brink of famine.

Until recently, aid organisations had been able to raise enough money to assist most Yemenis in need. Between 2017 and 2019, UN-coordinated plans were on average 81% fundedexternal link – despite needs growing over that period from $2.3 billion (CHF2 billion) to $4.2 billion. But over the past three years, funding coverage has fallen to an average of 58%.

In February, at a pledging event in Geneva, the UN had hoped to raise $4.3 billion for aid operations in Yemen this year. But international donors promised $1.2 billionexternal link , not enough to last through 2023.

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