At Al Hudaydah on Yemen's
west coast, the only major port still functioning, a trickle of
humanitarian food supplies is arriving on a handful of aid ships allowed
through the naval blockade each week, but many more ships are being
turned away or made ...
Aid agencies say embargo imposed by US and UK-backed Arab coalition
has had dramatic effect, with almost 80% of population in urgent need of
food, water and medical supplies
A young Yemeni poses in front of the ruins of her family house.
Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA
Twenty million Yemenis, nearly 80% of the population, are in urgent
need of food, water and medical aid, in a humanitarian disaster that aid
agencies say has been dramatically worsened by a naval blockade imposed
by an Arab coalition with US and British backing.
Washington and London have quietly tried to persuade the Saudis, who
are leading the coalition, to moderate its tactics, and in particular to
ease the naval embargo, but to little effect. A small number of aid
ships is being allowed to unload but the bulk of commercial shipping, on
which the desperately poor country depends, are being blocked.
Despite western and UN entreaties, Riyadh has also failed to disburse
any of the $274m it promised in funding for humanitarian relief.
According to UN estimates due to be released next week 78% of the
population is in need of emergency aid, an increase of 4 million over
the past three months.
The desperate shortage of food, water and medical supplies raises
urgent questions over US and UK support for the Arab coalition’s
intervention in the Yemeni civil war since March. Washington provides logistical and intelligence supportthrough
a joint planning cell established with the Saudi military, who are
leading the campaign. London has offered to help the Saudi military
effort in “every practical way short of engaging in combat”.
On western urging, Riyadh had promised to move towards
“intelligence-led interdiction”, stopping and searching individual ships
on which there was good reason to believe arms were being smuggled, and
away from a blanket policy of blocking the majority of vessels
approaching Yemeni ports. But aid agencies and shipping sources say
there is little sign of any such change. UN sources say that only 15% of
the pre-crisis volume of imports is getting through, and that the
country depends on imports for nine-tenths of its food.
“There are less and less of the basic necessities. People are
queueing all day long,” said Nuha Abdul Jabber, Oxfam’s humanitarian
programme manager in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. “The blockade means
it’s impossible to bring anything into the country. There are lots of
ships, with basic things like flour, that are not allowed to approach.
The situation is deteriorating, hospitals are now shutting down, without
diesel. People are dying of simple diseases. It is becoming almost
impossible to survive.”
In April, Saudi Arabia
pledged it would completely fund a $274m UN emergency humanitarian fund
for Yemen, but so far none of the money has been transferred to the UN
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Riyadh is nonetheless
insisting upon the right to decide which aid workers can enter Yemen.
At Al Hudaydah on Yemen’s west coast, the only major port still
functioning, a trickle of humanitarian food supplies is arriving on a
handful of aid ships allowed through the naval blockade each week, but
many more ships are being turned away or made to wait many days to be
searched for weapons.
A State Department official said Washington was pressing for basic
goods to be allowed through the blockade. “We continue to urge all
sides, including the Saudis, to exercise restraint and avoid unnecessary
violence,” the official said in an emailed statement. “We also urge all
parties to allow the entry and delivery of urgently needed food,
medicine, fuel and other necessary assistance through UN and
international humanitarian organisation channels to address the urgent
needs of civilians impacted by the crisis.”
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Britain’s
Royal Navy has liaison officers working with their Saudi counterparts,
and they have been trying to urge a more targeted, intelligence-driven,
approach to stopping a much smaller number of ships, so far with limited
effect. In London, where a pro-Saudi line has been driven principally
by Downing Street, there is growing unease over the impact of the
blockade.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the UK “urges the coalition to
quickly move to targeted naval interdictions of incoming commercial
ships”.
“The UK remains in close contact with the government of Yemen and
other international partners regarding the situation in Yemen, including
the maritime blockade. The foreign secretary discussed Yemen with the Saudi foreign minister while in Paris this week,” the spokesman said.
“We are not participating directly in military operations, but are
providing support to the Saudi Arabian armed forces through pre-existing
arrangements. A small number of UK personnel are coordinating planning
support with Saudi and coalition partners. All UK military personnel
have extensive training on International Humanitarian Law.”
The Saudi government did not respond to requests for comment.
Yemen government ground forces and Saudi-led air strikes attack Houthi militias
The blockade – which is also being enforced in the air and on land –
has choked a fragile economy already staggering under the impact of a
six-month civil conflict pitting Yemeni forces loyal to the President
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now exiled in Riyadh, against Houthi rebels
allied to his predecessor and rival, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia and including Egypt,
Jordan, Sudan and Bahrain intervened in March in support of Hadi,
viewing the Houthis as an Iranian proxy force. Iran denies accusations
of supplying arms to the insurgents, but British officials believe there
are Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisers with the Houthi rebel
leadership.
Over 2,000 Yemeni civilians are known to have been killed in the
fighting so far, and, according to new UN figures, a million have been
forced from their homes. The humanitarian crisis meanwhile, affects the
overwhelming majority of the population. Tankers carrying petrol, diesel
and fuel oil are also being stopped routinely by the naval blockade,
crippling the country’s electricity supply and forcing the mass closure
of hospitals and schools. Most urgently, it has stopped water pumps
working. Oxfam reckons the fighting and embargo have led to 3 million
Yemenis being cut off from a clean water supply since March, bringing to
16 million the total without access to drinking water or sanitation –
nearly two-thirds of the population – with dire implications for the
spread of disease.
Cooking gas is almost impossible to find. Queues to refill gas
cylinders in Sana’a now last for than a week, with people camping out by
their cylinders or chaining them down to keep their place in the queue.
There are also long lines of abandoned cars waiting for elusive
supplies of petrol.
The UN estimate that nearly 20 million Yemenis are in need of
humanitarian assistance – 78% of the entire population – represents an
increase of 4 million since the escalation of the conflict with the
Saudi intervention in March. Twelve million Yemenis are “food insecure”,
having to struggle to find their next meal, up 1.4 million since March.
Five million are described as “severely food insecure”, meaning they
often go for days without a meal.
In the cities worst hit by street fighting, such as Aden, civilians
are either cowering at home to avoid sniper fire and bombardment or have
joined the more than half million Yemenis forced out of their houses
and now looking for food and shelter. But the blockade has spread the
impact of the humanitarian crisis around the country.
According to Save the Children, hospitals in at least 18 of the
country’s 22 governorates have been closed or severely affected by the
fighting or the lack of fuel. In particular, 153 health centres that
supplied nutrition to over 450,000 at-risk children have shut down, as
well as 158 outpatient clinics, responsible for providing basic
healthcare to nearly half a million children under five. At the same
time, due to lack of clean water and sanitation, cholera and other
diseases are on the rise. A dengue fever outbreak has been reported in
Aden.
“Children are dying preventable deaths in Yemen because the rate of
infectious diseases is rising ,” said Priya Jacob, Save the Children’s
director of programmes in Yemen. “The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is a
protracted and rapidly deteriorating situation that leaves four out of
five Yemeni people in need of aid. The ongoing naval and air blockade
means very little aid is getting through, exacerbating the needs of the
Yemeni people.”
“The lack of fuel is a real issue – both for our teams and for local
people, making it difficult to transport patients and medical supplies,”
said Ahmad Bilal, medical coordinator for Médecins sans Frontières
based in Yemen’s third city, Taiz. “For ordinary people it means that it
is hard to move around the city and it’s an ongoing struggle to access
clean water and food. Many people living in frontline areas are unable
to travel to clinics or hospitals for medical care both because of the
fighting and the lack of fuel. Even those who are able to make it to
health facilities find that they are not functioning. At least 12
hospitals in Taiz had to close their doors and stop receiving patients,
for these reasons.”
A shipping source in Al Hudaydah said the flow of ships into Yemen was down 75% compared with before the March intervention.
“Some ships have been docked in the past week or so, but many others
have been stopped and it’s hard to see any pattern. Sometimes the
coalition conducts a search and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it
depends which navy is involved. In the past few days the Saudis have
been more flexible, but the Egyptians have been rigid, not letting
anything through,” the shipping source said.
The uncertainty has made some ship owners nervous about having their
vessels impounded. Over the past few days, two tankers carrying 70,000
tonnes of diesel, steered away from the Yemen coast and have begun
offloading the fuel into small ships offshore. But as of this week, less
than a tenth of the country’s monthly fuel requirement of 5m tonnes is
getting through the blockade.
“We have heard a lot about international commitments to help Yemen
with big sums but we haven’t seen anything here,” Oxfam’s Nuha Abdul
Jabber added. “This is the moment for the world to understand the
severity of the situation.”
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