Conflict and Economic Collapse in War-torn Yemen Worsening Hunger Crisis
Voice of America
GENEVA - The World Food Program warns Yemen's already alarming hunger crisis is worsening due to ongoing conflict and a rapidly declining economy that are sending food prices soaring.
Of Yemen's population of just over 29 million people, around 21 million need humanitarian assistance. The United Nations, which considers Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, reports 16.2 million people are extremely short of food and suffering from acute hunger. Tobias Flaemig, the World Food Program head of Research, Assessment and Monitoring in Yemen, says people are resorting to desperate measures to survive, including cutting their food intake to just one meal a day. "We recently visited a village where families were resorting to eating leaves to survive," he said via a video link from the capital Sanaa. "Traveling to work, to reach markets or even to seek medical care is almost impossible because the cost of fuel is too high. Hunger leaves people acutely vulnerable to the various public health risks facing the country, including COVID-19, cholera, dengue, malaria."Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.