TANZANIA – More than 17 million people in conflict-torn Yemen are going hungry, including over a million children under the age of 5 who are suffering from “life-threatening acute malnutrition,” the United Nations humanitarian chief said Wednesday.

Tom Fletcher told the U.N. Security Council that the food security crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country, which is beset by civil war, has been accelerating since late 2023.

The number of people going hungry could climb to over 18 million by September, he warned, and the number of children with acute malnutrition could surge to 1.2 million early next year, “leaving many at risk of permanent physical and cognitive damage.”

According to experts who produce the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority that ranks the severity of hunger, more than 17,000 Yemenis are in the three worst categories of food insecurity — crisis stage or worse.

Fletcher said the U.N. hasn’t seen the current level of deprivation since before a U.N.-brokered truce in early 2022. He noted that it is unfolding as global funding for humanitarian aid is plummeting, which means reductions or cuts in food. According to the U.N., as of mid-May, the U.N.’s $2.5 billion humanitarian appeal for Yemen this year had received just $222 million, just 9%.

Yemen has been embroiled in civil war since 2014, when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition intervened months later and has been battling the rebels since 2015 to try and restore the government.

The war has devastated Yemen, created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, and turned into a stalemated proxy conflict. More than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, have been killed.

Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, told the council in a video briefing that two Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea this week – the first in over seven months – and Israeli airstrikes on the capital and key ports are escalating the conflict.

The Houthis have vowed to keep targeting vessels in the key waterway until the war in Gaza ends.

Grundberg said freedom of navigation in the Red Sea must be safeguarded and stressed that “Yemen must not be drawn deeper into regional crises that threaten to unravel the already extremely fragile situation in the country.”

“The stakes for Yemen are simply too high,” he said. “Yemen’s future depends on our collective resolve to shield it from further suffering and to give its people the hope and dignity they so deeply deserve.”

Grundberg warned that a military solution to the civil war “remains a dangerous illusion that risks deepening Yemen’s suffering.”

Negotiations offer the best hope to address the complex conflict, he said, and the longer it is drawn out “there is a risk that divisions could deepen further.”

Grundberg said both sides must signal a willingness to explore peaceful avenues — and an important signal would be the release of all conflict-related detainees. The parties have agreed to an all-for-all release, he said, but the process has stagnated for over a year.

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