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Even before fighting broke out in early 2015, Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. With an average life expectancy below 64, the nation is ranked 177th out of 189 in the2019 Human Development Index.

Over five years of conflict have left thousands of civilians dead and 3.65 million internally displaced. Its impact on the country's infrastructure has been devastating, with major overland routes and airports severely damaged.

Despite ongoing humanitarian assistance, 16.2 million Yemenis are food insecure.

The coordinated response of the humanitarian community has prevented catastrophe in Yemen. But if these interventions stop or are severely hampered, the situation is likely to deteriorate quickly.

Malnutrition rates among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world, with 1.2 million women and 2.3 million children requiring treatment for acute malnutrition. Of these children, 400.000 are at risk of dying without treatment.

Access constraints continue to pose a serious challenge to WFP in several areas especially where conflict is intense. Despite access and security challenges, WFP and its partners manage to deliver assistance to the vast majority of vulnerable people in the country.

WFP is providing food assistance for those most urgently in need of support in what has emerged as one of the world's worst hunger crises. The COVID-19 pandemic now poses a new threat to the people of Yemen. The economic impact of COVID-19 on countries like Yemen - struggling with poverty and devasted by conflict - may be more devastating than the disease itself.

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Even before fighting broke out in early 2015, Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. With an average life expectancy below 64, the nation is ranked 177th out of 189 in the 2019 Human Development Index. Over five years of conflict have left thousands of

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Unicef is on the ground working around the clock to protect children in Yemen. Since the start of the crisis, we have helped to reach more than 4 million children with over 3,000 tonnes of life-saving supplies, including life-saving therapeutic food, safe drinking water and health care supplies.

Thanks to the help of Unicef's supporters, in 2018, over 1 million children under the age of five received primary health care, and nearly 4.2 million were vaccinated against polio.

However, we simply don't have enough funds to reach every child in danger. We need your help to continue to provide essential life-saving supplies to the children who need it the most.

Your support will also help to ensure that displaced children do not miss out on an education. Through Unicef-supported schools and child-friendly spaces, children can continue their schooling and receive psychosocial care and support to help them cope with distress and trauma.
Please make a donation today
Donating by phone

If you're in the UK and would prefer to make a donation by phone, you can call our dedicated donation line: 0300 330 5699.
You can help us reach more children affected by the conflict. Please donate today and help us protect children in Yemen. For the first 12 months, monthly donations made to this appeal will go towards funding Unicef's work to support children affected by the Yemen conflict. After that donations will go to our Children's Emergency Fund, to save and protect children in emergencies around the world. In the unlikely event that the funds raised exceed Unicef's funding requirements for this appeal, your one off or monthly gift will also go to our Children's Emergency Fund.

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Unicef is on the ground working around the clock to protect children in Yemen. Since the start of the crisis, we have helped to reach more than 4 million children with over 3,000 tonnes of life-saving supplies, including life-saving therapeutic food, safe drinking water and health care supplies.

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Yemen facing world’s “worst famine in decades”  - BBC News

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Who’s Responsible for the Famine in Yemen?

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Yemen's spiraling hunger crisis is a man-made disaster

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UNICEF report says the number of malnourished children in the country could reach 2.4 million over the next six months [File: Fawaz Salman/Reuters]

Millions of children in Yemen are at risk of starvation amid the coronavirus pandemic, which is tipping the war-torn nation into further devastation, the United Nations warned, appealing for nearly $500m in urgent humanitarian assistance.

In a new report on Friday, UNICEF, the UN children's fund, said the number of malnourished children in the country could reach 2.4 million - a 20 percent increase - by the end of the year.

Another 6,600 children under the age of five could also die from preventable causes, as the pandemic has weakened the country's struggling healthcare system and disrupted services.

"Countless childhoods have been lost in this five-year war and we fear we will lose many more as COVID-19 spreads," Sara Beysolow Nyanti, UNICEF Representative to Yemen, said in a statement.

"We cannot overstate the scale of this emergency as children, in what is already the world's worst humanitarian crisis, battle for survival as COVID-19 takes hold," she added.

"If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation and many will die."

The UNICEF report said almost 9.58 million children do not have sufficient access to safe water, sanitation or hygiene, putting them at a greater risk of infection, while 7.8 million do not have access to education amid the school closures.

'Fall off the cliff'

Five years of war in Yemen have pitted the internationally recognised government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

The Middle East's poorest nation has seen its economy decimated as a result, leaving millions unemployed and 80 percent of the country in need of humanitarian assistance. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the situation.

Officially, Yemen's internationally recognised government has declared more than 900 cases of COVID-19 and more than 250 deaths, but the true number is believed to be much higher.

At a closed UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned many more people will starve to death, succumb to COVID-19, die of cholera and watch their children die because they have not been immunised for killer diseases.

He added the coronavirus was spreading rapidly across Yemen and about 25 percent of the country's confirmed cases have died - "five times the global average".

At a June 2 virtual donor conference, mainly Arab and Western countries pledged $1.35bn for aid operations in Yemen, far less than the $2.4bn the UN had asked for, and the $3.6bn the UN received last year.

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UN: Millions of Yemeni children on the 'brink of starvation'

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Millions of children in Yemen are at risk of starvation amid the coronavirus pandemic, which is tipping the war-torn nation into further devastation, the United Nations warned, appealing for nearly $500m in urgent humanitarian assistance.

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A child receives treatment from a mobile UNICEF health team supported by the European Union in Yemen. Photo by: European Union / Peter Biro / CC BY-NC-ND

Since the conflict escalated in 2015, Yemen has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 24 million people in need of assistance. The rapid transmission of COVID-19 and renewed fighting have only aggravated the situation, taking humanitarian needs in Yemen to dizzying new heights.
UN appeal to address Yemen 'catastrophe' falls $1B short
During a virtual event in June, donors pledged $1.35 billion for the humanitarian response in Yemen - about half of the requested amount.

And just when more lifesaving assistance is needed, restrictions imposed by parties to the conflict and dwindling donor resources are all but choking the lifeline that humanitarian organizations offer to the most destitute Yemenis.

Four-fifths of the population need help to cope with the crippling effects of conflict, displacement, and disease. The war has left millions displaced and the health system in tatters. Millions of Yemenis currently depend on United Nations food assistance to survive, as food prices soar and the economy tanks. A severe hunger crisis is again on the horizon.

Obstacles to humanitarian assistance

Humanitarians working in Yemen are doing a heroic job, providing critical assistance under tremendous pressure. And yet the efforts of the humanitarian community to protect and help the most vulnerable people are often obstructed by fighting and deliberate impediments. Last year, access constraints at times deprived an estimated 8 million people in Yemen of some form of humanitarian assistance.

2019 saw an alarming surge in violence against aid workers and humanitarian assets, ranging from murder and assault to arbitrary arrests and theft. A coordinated media campaign in northern Yemen went so far as to incite hate speech and violence against aid organizations. Today, health professionals caring for coronavirus patients and scapegoated groups face threats and attacks.

Obstructing humanitarian assistance and attacking aid workers constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law. All parties to the conflict in Yemen must abide by their obligations under the law of war and lift the obstacles placed in the way of aid organizations. Civilians, critical civilian infrastructure, and humanitarian organizations must be protected and respected.

The EU Humanitarian Air Bridge

There is no time to waste. The Yemeni people need help and they need it now. The European Union and the broader international community cannot turn a blind eye.

On Thursday, the first plane landed in Yemen carrying humanitarian and medical supplies as part of an EU Humanitarian Air Bridge. Eleven further air bridge flights are to follow, transporting 220 tons of lifesaving aid from Europe and humanitarian hubs to Sanaa and Aden. In setting up this emergency lifeline to the most vulnerable Yemenis, the EU has heeded the call of the humanitarian community in Yemen. It is desperate to reinforce the emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic and the broader crisis that has engulfed the country.

The EU Humanitarian Air Bridge - a temporary solution fully funded by the EU and in coordination with member states - aims to respond to this pressing need by getting relief items for U.N. agencies, NGOs, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent into Yemen. It complements tireless efforts by the U.N. to safeguard the humanitarian supply line in the context of coronavirus restrictions.

A pledging conference in June regrettably fell short of the $2.4 billion that the U.N. and its partners had asked for to provide essential assistance and protection to millions of people, including thousands of migrants stranded in Yemen and often stigmatized as "transmitters of disease."

Matching its 2019 commitments, the EU has just increased its humanitarian aid for Yemen by another €70 million ($81 million), bringing the total humanitarian funding of the EU for Yemen to €115 million for 2020.

Ending the conflict

But humanitarian aid cannot substitute for a solution to the conflict that has ravaged Yemen for years. As a matter of immediate urgency, there needs to be a firm and unconditional cease-fire to avoid further loss of life and allow aid to reach people in need.

More than anything, after five years of relentless conflict, the guns need to fall silent. There has to be a renewed sense of urgency for finding a diplomatic way out of the war, for humanitarians to get the access they need to help, and for the people in Yemen to rebuild their lives. The EU, together with other members of the international community, continues reaching out to parties and stakeholders in support of U.N. efforts to put an end to the war and get the parties to the negotiating table.

Ultimately what is needed is a political solution. It is fundamental that all parties to the conflict answer the U.N. secretary-general's call on those fighting to end hostilities.

This is urgent; this tragedy cannot go on. The people of Yemen have suffered enough.

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Opinion: The time to step up for the people of Yemen is now

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Since the conflict escalated in 2015, Yemen has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 24 million people in need of assistance. The rapid transmission of COVID-19 and renewed fighting have only aggravated the situation, taking humanitarian needs in Yemen to dizzying new heights.

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The head of the U.N. food agency warned after a visit to Yemen that his underfunded organization may be forced to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations in a desperate bid to stave off widespread famine in coming months, describing conditions in the war-stricken nation as "hell."

The World Food Program needs at least $815 million in Yemen aid over the next six months, but has only $300 million, the agency's executive director, David Beasley, told The Associated Press in an interview. He said the agency would need another $1.9 billion to meet targets for the year.

Beasley visited Yemen earlier this week, including the capital of Sanaa which is under the control of Iran-backed Houthi rebels. He said that at a child malnutrition ward in a Sanaa hospital he saw children wasting away from lack of food. Many, he said, were on the brink of death from entirely preventable and treatable causes, and they were the lucky ones who were receiving medical care.

He said the world needs to wake up to how bad things have gotten in Yemen, particularly for the country's youngest, some of whom he had seen in hospital beds in the Sanaa hospital.

"In a children's wing or ward of a hospital, you know you normally hear crying, and laughter. There's no crying, there's no laughter, there's dead silence," he said late Tuesday, speaking to the AP by video conference from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he had just landed from Yemen.

"I went from room to room, and literally, children that in any other place in the world would be fine, they'd might get a little sick but they'd get recovered, but not here."

"This is hell," he said. "It's the worst place on earth. And it's entirely man-made."

The U.N. has warned that 16 million people in Yemen - or about half the population - could face serious food insecurity. Tens of thousands of people already live in famine-like conditions, in what aid organizations have called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Some 400,000 children are in need of immediate assistance to save their lives from deadly malnutrition. Worsening fuel shortages could throw millions more into deep poverty.

Since the outbreak of Yemen's civil war six years ago, U.N.-led aid efforts have been chronically underfunded. This year's global fundraising drive came up short as well - more so than in previous years - because aid dollars have been shrinking as a fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

A pledging conference last month raised a little more than half from the international community of what was needed to continue food aid services for the next year.

Yemen, already the Arab world's poorest country, has been caught in a grinding war since 2014 when the Houthis descended from their northern enclave and took over Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee. In the spring of 2015, a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition began a destructive air campaign to dislodge the Houthis while imposing a land, sea and air embargo on Yemen.

Throughout the conflict, humanitarian agencies have faced obstacles in getting aid to those who need it most, particularly in Houthi-controlled territories; obstruction, distrust and fighting have played a role.

Beasley said his organization has made gains on these fronts particularly in access and accountability with the Houthi authorities, and now the obstacle is simply a lack of funding.

"We've turned a corner with the Houthis... in terms of cooperation, collaboration," he said.

He touted a new program by which recipients of a cash aid program are verified via a biometric system to assure it goes to the right people. It's a scheme the organization plans to scale up, if they can get more funding.

It remains unclear where more money might come from. Beasley predicted more catastrophes in 2021 if world leaders do not prioritize helping the most vulnerable countries including Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria.

"About May, June, July, if we don't have massive amounts of monies put into these places, you're going to have mass starvation, mass destabilization and mass migration," he said.

One source of funding for Yemen could be a new anonymous aid fund. Beasley confirmed media reports of the Famine Relief Fund, created by wealthy private donors, and said some of the them could be from the United States and the Gulf. He said the WFP was already in talks with the fund. He would not elaborate.

Earlier this month, the aid industry-focused publication The New Humanitarian reported on the emergence of the Famine Relief Fund, created by anonymous benefactors to help address Yemen's crisis, and wrote that it was already in talks with UN agencies and other aid groups.

Beasley said he has already been reaching out to the world's billionaires to get them to contribute somehow. So far, the only stipulation that came with the money from the new anonymous fund would be that it go to those who are teetering on the edge of famine, he said.

"My God, I'm going to take any dollar I can get from anywhere in the world to save the life of a child right now," he said.

Beasley repeated calls that the war needs to be brought to a halt, though the situation on the ground in Yemen is poised for a new escalation, as Houthi and government forces battle for the oil-producing province of Marib. Fighting there has displaced 15,000 people in the last month, many of whom had already fled the conflict in other areas, according to the U.N. migration agency.

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'This is hell': UN food aid chief visits Yemen, fears famine

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The head of the U.N. food agency warned after a visit to Yemen that his underfunded organization may be forced to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations in a desperate bid to stave off widespread famine in coming months, describing conditions in the war-stricken nation as "hell."

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Dubai (AFP)

About 400,000 children under the age of five are in danger of dying of acute malnutrition in war-torn and impoverished Yemen, UN agencies warned Friday.

They said half of those in the most vulnerable age bracket, or 2.3 million small children, are projected to suffer from severe malnutrition this year.

"These numbers are yet another cry for help from Yemen where each malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive," World Food Programme chief David Beasley said in a joint statement.

The number of Yemeni children in danger of death from lack of food has increased to 400,000, an increase of 22 percent over 2020.

"More children will die with every day that passes without action, said Henrietta Fore, head of the United Nations children's agency UNICEF.

"Humanitarian organisations need urgent predictable resources and unhindered access to communities on the ground to be able to save lives."

The UN agencies warned that about 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are also expected to suffer from extreme malnutrition in 2021.

"The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mix of conflict, economic collapse and a severe shortage of funding to provide the life-saving help that's desperately needed," said Beasley.

"But there is a solution to hunger, and that's food and an end to the violence."

Yemen is engulfed in a bloody power struggle that erupted in 2014 between its government, supported by Saudi Arabia, and Iran-backed Huthi Shiite rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and most of the north.

Today, millions of Yemenis are on the brink of famine with the economy destroyed, schools and hospitals barely functioning, and tens of thousands killed.

According to the United Nations, more than three million people have been displaced and close to 80 percent of the 29-million population is in need of some form of aid for survival.

The UN says that in 2020 it received only $1.43 billion of the $3.2 billion needed to fund aid projects in Yemen.

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Half of Yemen under-5s face acute malnutrition: UN - France 24

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Dubai (AFP) About 400,000 children under the age of five are in danger of dying of acute malnutrition in war-torn and impoverished Yemen, UN agencies warned Friday. They said half of those in the most vulnerable age bracket, or 2.3 million small children, are projected to suffer from severe malnutrition this year.

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SANA'A, 22 July 2020 - Economic shocks, conflict, floods, desert locusts and now COVID-19 are creating a perfect storm that could reverse hard-earned food security gains in Yemen, warns the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.

The analysis carried out so far in 133 districts in southern Yemen[1] forecasts an alarming increase of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity, i.e. in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) and Emergency (IPC Phase 4) by the end of the year.

Acute food insecurity in these areas eased last year thanks to a massive scale-up of humanitarian assistance but all the good work could quickly be undone as the number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity is forecast to increase from 2 million to 3.2 million in the next six months.

This would represent an increase from 25 percent (in February-April) to 40 percent of the population (in July-December) suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity even if humanitarian food assistance and access to those in need are maintained.

Drivers of acute food insecurity:

Economic decline is the main driver. Economic crisis and inflation persist with the local currency in free fall, rising food prices and a near depletion of foreign exchange reserves. For example, from mid-December 2019 to mid-June 2020, the local currency (Yemeni riyal) lost an average of 19 percent of its value against the US dollar, surpassing the 2018 crisis levels.

Conflict remains a key driver of acute food insecurity.

COVID-19 is affecting food availability, access and market supply, as well as income-earning opportunities and wages. Important measures to restrict the spread of COVID-19 have led to import delays, logistical barriers, and disrupted markets. Remittances from Yemenis abroad have also decreased by about 20 percent and are expected to continue declining.

New desert locust and fall armyworm breeding areas are emerging as a consequence of ecologically favourable conditions, including rains, and threaten food production in Yemen, the region and beyond.

Cereal production this year, for example, is forecast to be 365,000 metric tonnes -- less than half of pre-war levels.

Flash floods have already had a devastating impact in some areas, and most of the districts along the Arabian coast are expected to be hit by cyclones in the coming months.

"The IPC is telling us that Yemen is again on the brink of a major food security crisis. Eighteen months ago, when we faced a similar situation, we were generously funded. We used the resources we were entrusted with wisely and massively scaled-up assistance in the districts where people were the hungriest and most at risk. The result was tremendous. We prevented famine. Unless we receive the funding we need now, we won't be able to do the same this time," said Lise Grande, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen.

"The people of Yemen have already been through a lot and are resilient. But they are facing now too many hardships and threats all at once - from COVID-19 to Desert Locusts invasions. Small-holder farmers and families who depend upon agriculture for their livelihoods need our support now more than ever," said Hussein Gadain, FAO Representative in Yemen.

"Yemen is facing a crisis on multiple fronts," said Laurent Bukera, WFP Country Director in Yemen. "We must act now.In 2019, thanks to a massive scale-up, WFP and partners were able to reverse the deterioration in the worst hit areas of Yemen. The warning signs have returned and with Coronavirus pandemic added to the mix, it could get a lot worse if humanitarian action is delayed."

"A dangerous combination of conflict, economic hardship, food scarcity and a crumbling health system has pushed millions of children in Yemen to the brink, and the COVID-19 crisis could make things even worse," said Sherin Varkey, UNICEF's acting Representative in Yemen. "More and more young children are at risk of becoming severely malnourished and requiring urgent treatment. Increased and sustained support is vital if we are to save these children's lives."
What do we need to do now?
The IPC analysis's recommendations for urgent actions include:

Ensuring continued and unhindered food assistance to save lives and protecting the livelihoods of populations facing high levels of acute food insecurity, including displaced people;

Rehabilitating water infrastructures damaged by floods and reducing the impacts of future floods on water and irrigation systems;

Supporting farmers who lost their crops and pasture due to pest and climate shocks (locust infestation, fall armyworm, floods);

Promoting good nutritional practices at the household level through activities such as home gardening and educational awareness on food and water safety; and

Strengthening early warning and general food security monitoring systems to mitigate the negative impact of shocks and enable a rapid and coordinated response.

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Notes for editors:
[1] The IPC analysis is based on data gathered in March 2020 in 133 districts across 13 governorates in southern Yemen as well as a review of hunger drivers and their impacts in these areas in the second quarter of 2020. These include flash floods, Desert Locusts and Fall Armyworm invasions, and a wave of conflict in Al Jawf and Marib. A full IPC analysis including data from the rest of the country is expected to be released in a few months.

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Yemen sees return to alarming levels of food insecurity - UNICEF, WFP, FAO & OCHA

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SANA'A, 22 July 2020 - Economic shocks, conflict, floods, desert locusts and now COVID-19 are creating a perfect storm that could reverse hard-earned food security gains in Yemen, warns the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.

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Yemen crisis briefing

What caused the current crisis in Yemen?

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies began a military intervention in Yemen as part of an effort to unseat the Ansar Allah movement (often called the Houthis) and restore former President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. It's estimated that 100,000 people in Yemen have been killed since early 2016, including 18,500 civilians killed by airstrikes. 3.6 million have been uprooted as a result of this conflict.

Even before the current crisis, Yemen's malnutrition rate ranked as one of the world's worst, and more than half of its population lacked access to drinking water. Violence and discrimination against women and girls has dramatically increased.

There have been several failed attempts to halt this conflict and safely provide aid to those in need. Yemen remains the Arab world's poorest country.

In 2020, the knock on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a steep drop in humanitarian funding put the country at risk of massive further deterioration. Food insecurity is rising and thousands are facing famine-like conditions.

What are the main humanitarian challenges in Yemen?

Eighty percent of Yemen's population is in need of emergency relief and humanitarian assistance.

Continued fighting prevents shipments of food and fuel from entering the country. Hospitals do not have diesel fuel to operate generators during power cuts, and ambulances have run out of gasoline. Stocks of antibiotics and critical medical supplies have been depleted.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened Yemen's economic crisis, increasing the risk of famine in the country. The humanitarian response faces unprecedented threats from underfunding, on top of one of the world's most challenging operating environments; 3 million fewer Yemenis were receiving aid each month by late 2020 compared to the response at the beginning of the year.

How does the IRC help in Yemen?

The IRC's mission is to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover and gain control of their future.

We first began assisting people in Yemen in 2012, providing clean water and emergency aid to villages in the south of the country.

Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, the IRC continues to deliver urgent health care and nutrition to those displaced by the war and people living in remote, hard-to-reach areas, and reproductive healthcare to pregnant women and new mothers. We are also continuing to provide critical support to women impacted by gender-based violence and are supporting the establishment of a COVID-19 isolation unit.

The IRC is continuing our efforts in the Aden, Abyan, Lahj, Al Dahle'e and Shabwa and Sana'a governorates by:

providing health, reproductive health, nutrition, water and sanitation services to more than a quarter-million people;

delivering essential drugs and medical supplies to hospitals;

Improving access to education for millions of out-of-school children;

training health staff on cholera treatment;

calling for improved humanitarian access and open air and seaports;

calling for a country-wide ceasefire and calling on the international community to help achieve a lasting peace.

What can I do to help?

Donate: Make a tax-deductible donation to support the IRC. We are on the ground saving children and families from malnutrition and life-threatening diseases. We are providing clean water, medicine, nutrition services and other urgent aid to as many people as possible. Your gift will help us as we work to save lives in Yemen and in countries around the world.

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Yemen is facing the largest humanitarian crisis of our time. The International Rescue Committee provides lifesaving emergency aid, clean water, education, women's protection and medical care to millions of people in Yemen affected by violent conflict and a growing health crisis that now includes COVID-19.

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AL-HANABIYA, Yemen (AP) - When Issa Nasser was born late last year in a village in northern Yemen, his weight was about 3 kilograms, or 6.6 pounds. Now, the 7-month-old infant weighs nearly the same - less than half the average weight for his age - and has wafer-thin skin and emaciated limbs.

Issa's condition mirrors what the U.N. children's agency warned about last week, that millions of children in war-torn Yemen could be pushed to the brink of starvation as the coronavirus sweeps across the Arab world's poorest country and as humanitarian agencies suffer from a huge drop in funding.

The baby's father, Ibrahim Nasser, a 51-year-old displaced fisherman now living in the village of al-Hanabiya in the district of Abs in Hajjah province, said the family has spent most of Issa's months-long life so far in a health care center, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the village. The ill-equipped medical center services more than 50,000 displaced people in the district.

Four years ago, when fighting between Yemen's Houthi rebels and government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, escalated, Nasser left his home village near the coastal city of Midi, also in Hajjah province, on the border with Saudi Arabia.

Since then, he has been unemployed and depends on aid to feed his family, which became part of more than 3 million people displaced by the war, many pushed to the brink of famine amid stalemated fighting and a coronavirus pandemic that is ripping through the country.

"I am a poor person, and my son is in this state," said Nasser. "And they tell me he is malnourished, you can see how his condition is."

The health care center found out about the infant recently through a local charity which provides aid to displaced in the area, said Dr. Ali Hajar, who oversees the malnutrition clinic at the center.

"His condition is very, very tragic. He suffers from acute malnutrition. His skin is stretching tightly over his bones," the physician said.

The war, which wrecked the devastated country's already fragile ability to feed its population, began late in 2014, when Houthi rebels swept down from the mountains and occupied northern Yemen and the capital, Sanaa. The Iran-backed rebels pushed the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to the south and eventually into exile.

As the rebels pushed farther south, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states, backed by the United States, formed a coalition to take on the Houthis, and intervened in Yemen in 2015, describing their involvement as an effort to stop Iran from gaining sway over the country.

The conflict has killed more than 100,000 people and created the world's worst humanitarian disaster, with more than 3 million people internally displaced and two-thirds of the population reliant on food assistance for survival.

The situation in Yemen is only expected to get worse as donor countries recently cut back on aid amid the coronavirus pandemic and also due to concerns that the aid might not be reaching its intended recipients in territories controlled by the Houthis.

Some 24 million Yemeni people, which is 80% of the country's entire population, require some form of assistance or protection, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. And 75% of U.N. programs for the country, covering essentially every sector, from food to health care and nutrition, have already shut their doors or reduced operations.

The World Food Program had to cut rations in half and U.N.-funded health services have been reduced in nearly 200 hospitals nationwide.

Nutrition programs will also be cut, affecting 260,000 severely malnourished children. More than 1 million women and 2 million children need treatment for acute malnutrition, OCHA said earlier this month.

Last week, UNICEF warned that unless $54.5 million are disbursed for health and nutrition aid by the end of August, more than 23,000 children will be at increased risk of dying because of acute malnutrition. It also said that 5 million others under the age of 5 will not have access to vaccines against deadly diseases.

"We cannot overstate the scale of this emergency as children," said Sara Beysolow Nyanti, UNICEF representative to Yemen. "If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation and many will die."

Yemen has officially recorded more than 1,120 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, including 303 deaths. However, the actual tally is believed to be much higher as testing capabilities are severely limited, and the Houthi rebels have not revealed the number of infections in areas under their control.

"I don't have anything to give him," said Nasser, the fisherman, looking in despair at his boy, little Issa, and the child's large, wide-open eyes.

___

Associated Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

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Hunger stalks children in Yemen as UN cuts aid programs

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AL-HANABIYA, Yemen (AP) - When Issa Nasser was born late last year in a village in northern Yemen, his weight was about 3 kilograms, or 6.6 pounds. Now, the 7-month-old infant weighs nearly the same - less than half the average weight for his age - and has wafer-thin skin and emaciated limbs.