The Yemen’s food crisis has deteriorated, according to the
United Nations (UN) agencies who are not calling for urgent assistance to avert
reaching a catastrophic situation, reports NaijaAgroNet.
The number of food insecure people in Yemen, NaijaAgroNet gathered, has risen by 3 million in seven months, with an estimated 17.1
million people now struggling to feed themselves, according to a joint assessment
by three UN agencies.
Of the 17.1 million food insecure people, about 7.3 million
are considered to be in need of emergency food assistance.
The preliminary results of the Emergency Food Security and
Nutrition Assessment (EFSNA) show that food security and nutrition conditions
are deteriorating rapidly due to the ongoing conflict.
More than two-thirds of Yemen's population of 27.4 million
people now lack access to food and consume an inadequate diet.
The EFSNA is a joint survey conducted by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in cooperation with
the authorities in Yemen. It is the first national, household-level assessment
conducted in the country since the escalation of the conflict in mid-March
2015.
Rates of acute malnutrition were found to have passed the
"critical" threshold in four governorates, while agricultural
production is falling across the country.
"The speed at which the situation is deteriorating and the
huge jump in food insecure people is extremely worrying," said Salah Hajj
Hassan, FAO Representative in Yemen. "Bearing in mind that agriculture is
the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population, FAO is
urgently calling for funds to scale up its agricultural livelihoods support to
farmers, herders and fishing communities to improve their access to food in
2017 and prevent the dire food and livelihood security situation from
deteriorating further."
"We are witnessing some of the highest numbers of
malnutrition amongst children in Yemen in recent times. Children who are
severely and acutely malnourished are 11 times more at risk of death as
compared to their healthy peers, if not treated on time. Even if they survive,
these children risk not fulfilling their developmental potentials, posing a
serious threat to an entire generation in Yemen and keeping the country mired
in the vicious cycle of poverty and under development," said Dr Meritxell
Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.
"The current level of hunger in Yemen is unprecedented,
which is translating into severe hardship and negative humanitarian
consequences for millions of Yemenis, particularly affecting vulnerable
groups," said Stephen Anderson, WFP Country Director in Yemen. "Tragically,
we see more and more families skipping meals or going to bed hungry, while
children and mothers are slipping away with little to sustain themselves. WFP
is urgently calling for support to provide food for the seven million people
who are severely food insecure and may not survive this situation for much
longer."
Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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