Unicef report about Yemen

23rd August 2021

The war in Yemen, now in its seventh year, has created the largest humanitarian crisis in the world – one made worse by the public health and socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since I last spoke with you about Yemen two years ago in the Security Council Chamber, little has changed for the country’s civilian population. Each day, the violence and destruction wreak havoc on the lives of children and their families. This year has seen growing displacement, with 1.6 million children now internally displaced because of the violence – particularly around Hudaydah and Marib.

Basic services like healthcare, sanitation and education – all of which are vital for the humanitarian response – are incredibly fragile and on the brink of total collapse.

Widespread lack of access to safe and sufficient water is of the utmost concern. Those who are internally displaced are particularly vulnerable to ongoing water cuts taking place across front lines.

Meanwhile Yemen’s economy is in frighteningly poor condition. GDP has dropped by 40 per cent since 2015, causing jobs to disappear and family incomes to plummet. About one quarter of the population – including many doctors, teachers and sanitation workers – rely on civil servant salaries which are paid erratically if at all. There is food in Yemen, but those who cannot afford it are at risk of starvation.  
in Yemen, almost 21 million people, including 11.3 million children, need humanitarian assistance to survive. 2.3 million children are acutely malnourished and nearly 400,000 children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition are at imminent risk of death. More than 10 million children and close to 5 million women cannot properly access health services.

In Yemen, one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes, including malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Children’s education in Yemen has also been gravely impacted by the war. Two million children are out of school and one in six schools can no longer be used. Two-thirds of teachers – over 170,000 teachers in total – have not received a regular salary for more than four years because of the conflict and geopolitical divides. This puts around four million additional children at risk of disrupted education or dropping out as unpaid teachers quit teaching to find other ways of providing for their families.
“Children who do not finish their education are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty. If out-of-school children or those who have dropped out recently are not properly supported, they may never return to school.

These are the numbers. But the numbers do not really tell us what it is like to be a child growing up today in Yemen.

Being a child in Yemen means watching your parents struggle to provide enough food for your family to eat, without which you could starve. It means that if you are fortunate enough to have a school to go to, you could be killed by a bullet, an explosion or by stepping on a mine walking along the road to get there. 

Or perhaps you are one of the children recruited to join the fighting, used by a party in a non-combat role, or forced into marriage because your family is out of options.

Being a child in Yemen means you have probably either experienced or witnessed horrific violence to which no child should ever be exposed. It means that if you do survive the war, you might carry the physical and emotional scars with you for the rest of your life, undermining your development and happiness as an adult.

Fighting around your community means it may be impossible for you to get vaccinated against polio or measles. And if you do get sick, there may be no hospital or clinic for you to safely visit.

Being a child in Yemen is the stuff of nightmares. 

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