“Children did not start the war in Yemen, but they are paying the highest price. Some 360,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, fighting for their lives every day. And one credible report put the number of children under 5 who have died of starvation at more than 80,000,” Guterres told a donor conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday, Yemeni News reported.
He added that continued Yemen conflict has significantly increased the number of internally displaced people to 3.3 million, and the figure marks a sharp uptick from 2.2 million recorded last year.
The UN chief warned of the worsening health and humanitarian situation in Yemen, saying, “Over half of all health facilities are out of action, and nearly 20 million people lack access to adequate health care.”
“In 2017, the worst cholera epidemic in history reached unprecedented levels as water supplies and sanitation and public health services collapsed… Almost 18 million Yemenis still do not have adequate access to safe drinking water or sanitation,” Guterres noted.
The UN secretary-general added that Yemen’s crisis has taken a heavy toll on the education of students in the war-torn country.
“Two million children in Yemen are out of school, and 2,000 schools have been directly affected by the conflict: damaged, destroyed, converted to shelter for the displaced or occupied by armed groups. And half of the teachers in Yemen have not been paid in over two years,” he said.
Around 1.2 million Yemeni children live in conflict zones in war-battered Yemen, the UN children's agency UNICEF reported on Monday.
The children "continue to live in 31 active conflict zones including Al-Hudaydah, Tai'z, Hajjah and Sa'ada - in areas witnessing heavy, war-related violence", Geert Cappelaere UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement, Yemeni News reported.
"Not enough has changed for children in Yemen since the Stockholm agreement in December 2018," the official added.
"Every day since, eight children have been killed or injured. Most of the children killed were playing outdoors with their friends or were on their way to or from school," Cappelaere noted.
"Once again, UNICEF calls on all warring parties to put an end to violence in hotspots and across all of Yemen, protect civilians, keep children out of harm’s way and allow humanitarian deliveries to children and their families wherever they are in the country," he stated.
The United Nations has warned that the situation in war-ravaged Yemen is further deteriorating as the Arab country is facing the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
“The humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worst in the world,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding thousands.
Official UN figures say that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015. But the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) believes that at least 56,000 people have lost their lives in the war. The violence has also left around two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27 million relying on aid amid an ongoing strict naval and aerial blockade. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
Save the Children, a charity, has reported that more than 84,700 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen since the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the already-impoverished nation.
Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.
A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
an Oxfam representative stated that the US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war".
“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, told RT, adding that "British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war".
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.