The United Nations aid conference in Geneva is hoping to assemble a record $4.2 billion in aid for the country afflicted by the civil war. Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Asselborn represented Luxembourg at the conference on Tuesday and pledged at least €1.75 million in 2019 on behalf of the Grand Duchy.
The country is on the brink of the worst famine seen in 100 years. According to Save the Children, around 120,000 children risk starvation.
The country has been ravaged by a war since 2015 between president Hadi's troops, supported by Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, and Houthi rebels, supported by Iran. According to UN information, 10,000 people have already died as a result of the conflict and thousands of those have been civilians. NGOs involved in aid have claimed that the number of fatalities is far higher.
The warfare has additionally destroyed infrastructure throughout the country: notably, schools and hospitals have been targeted by air strikes. The situation worsened for millions in 2018 due to a cholera outbreak.
As a result, the United Nations has called for €3.7 million in aid for Yemen, which is the largest single country appeal that the organisation has asked for. Unicef Luxembourg's Paul Heber has explained that he has significant expectations of the conference and outlined the priorities for relief organisations.
First of all, as Heber explained, relief organisations are struggling to access children who require help. The fact remains that help corridors to get to these children simply do not exist. Heber also said that people tend to forget how big the country is: there are 1.2 million children living in 31 active conflict zones. As long as those conflict zones exist, the difficulty of reaching those children is paramount.
Unicef alone requires $542 million in order to provide civilians with water and clean water as well as to rebuild schools. On average, eight children die each day in the war-torn country.
As Heber explained, hostilities must end soon as thousands and thousands of children have died since the war broke out. "That cannot and should not continue!", he stressed. He also highlighted that people do not seem to have an awareness of the crisis, claiming that it has overtaken both the Syrian and Central African Republic crises, but lacks any similar public discourse. The level of violence that children witness every single day, Heber explained, is shockingly high and "indescribable".
The international community has been called to act and according to Paul Heber, they cannot lose any more time in doing so.
