by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Riyadh : Dr. Abdullah Al Rabeeah, Supervisor General of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief), signed four new joint cooperation agreements on Tuesday to provide humanitarian assistance to Yemen.
The agreements, with a total fund of $5,333,000, were approved at KSRelief’s headquarters in Riyadh with the following humanitarian partners: the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Benevolence Coalition for Humanitarian Relief.
Dr. Al Rabeeah signed the first and second agreements with the Benevolence Coalition for Humanitarian Relief which aims to implement programs in Hadhramaut, Shabwah, Aden, Lahij and Al Jawf to improve Yemeni livelihoods, the agreement aims to help support more than 20,000 Yemenis directly and indirectly.
The second agreement with the same organization aims to help families who lost their main breadwinner in Yemen to become self-reliant and to find stable sources of income.
The third agreement signed with the United Nations (FAO) will provide funding to implement an integrated response action plan to meet requirements in Yemen’s agriculture and food security sectors. It is expected that 147,000 people will benefit from the initiative, including farmers and the most vulnerable residents of the Al Hodeidah and Abyan governorates.
The fourth agreement signed with the IOM aims to help reintegrate returnees and settle displaced students into host communities in the Lahij area. The fund will provide assistance to 3,468 students with the aim of contributing to the social stability of Lahij, by improving educational opportunities for its youth.
—AG/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
United Nations : Yemen’s education system has been devastated by the country’s brutal conflict, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said here on Tuesday, reporting that at least half a million children have dropped out of school since the escalation of the war in 2015.
“An entire generation of children in Yemen faces a bleak future because of limited or no access to education,” said Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.
“Even those who remain in school are not getting the quality education they need.”
The total number of out-of-school children now stands at about 2 million, and almost three quarters of public school teachers have not been paid their salaries in over a year, putting the education of an additional 4.5 million children at grave risk, Xinhua reported.
More than 2,500 schools are out of use, with two thirds damaged by attacks, 27 per cent closed and 7 per cent used for military purposes or as shelters for displaced people.
Children risk being killed on their way to school. Fearing for their children’s safety, many parents choose to keep their children at home, according to UNICEF.
The lack of access to education has pushed children and families to dangerous alternatives, including early marriage, child labour and recruitment into the fighting.
UNICEF appeals to the warring parties, those who have influence on them, government authorities and donors to put an end to the war, pay teachers, protect children’s education unconditionally, and increase funding for education.
On March 26, 2015, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily at the request of Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to secure the return of the government to Sanaa, which had been seized by Houthi militias and allied units of the armed forces when the conflict initially erupted in 2014.
Three years on, the fighting is still raging and the United Nations has listed Yemen as the country of the world’s number one humanitarian crisis, where seven million Yemenis are on the brink of famine.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Amman : Three years of war coupled with decades of chronic underdevelopment in Yemen has resulted in 11 million children plagued by malnutrition and disease and facing acute humanitarian needs, according to the Unicef.
Geert Cappelaere, Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on Sunday that Yemeni children have been killed or seriously injured at a minimum rate of five per day in 2017 alone, reports Xinhua news agency.
The outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria have also claimed hundreds of lives.
“Much more attention is needed to (be paid to) the situation in Yemen. This has been rightly described as one of the worst humanitarian crises the world has ever known,” Cappelaere told reporters.
Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, has been devastated by a civil war since 2015, when what was supposed to be a peaceful transition of power from the long-time president Ali Abdullah Saleh, to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi evolved into a regional conflict.
With the Houthi rebel group joining the fight as well as an intervention by the coalition troops led by Saudi Arabia, Yemen has been dragged into a civil war which shows no sign of abating.
“It is fair to say today that every single girl and boy in Yemen is facing acute humanitarian needs,” Cappelaere said, adding that the war and underdevelopment had done “unfortunately nothing good” for the children.
The official said there were 200,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition in 2015, already one of the highest numbers in the world by then. Yet, the number has doubled in three years’ time till now, according to Cappelaere.
Further elaborating on the worsening humanitarian situation in the war-torn country, Cappelaere said that close to 2 million Yemeni children were deprived of education, and that a large proportion of girls are forced to marry at early ages — 75 per cent of them before the age of 18 and half younger than 15.
The official called for an immediate cease of war and urged authorities in all parts of the country to allow entry of humanitarian assistance without preconditions.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
By Ali Oweida,
Maarib, Yemen: Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) postponed its price rise on locally-manufactured oil derivatives following the province-wide protests, the company announced on Thursday.
In a statement, the provincial Maarib office of the company said: “It was decided to postpone the implementation of the new price list on the petroleum products given the life conditions in the province and the increasing number of domestic migrants.”
It also added that the postponement came after the instruction of the province’s governor Sultan al-Arade.
Earlier in the day, armed tribesmen blocked an international highway linking Maarib to Yemen’s eastern provinces and Saudi Arabia to protest a sharp rise in the price of locally-manufactured oil products.
On Monday, YPC raised its prices for locally-manufactured oil derivatives — including gasoline and diesel fuel — by more than 30 percent in the Maarib, Hadhramaut, Al-Jawf and Shabwa provinces.
It attributed the move to rising international oil prices and increasing production costs.
The ongoing conflict in Yemen, which began almost four years ago, has had a profoundly negative impact on the national economy.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
United Nations : The UN Security Council has called on all parties to the conflict in Yemen to allow and facilitate safe, rapid and unhindered humanitarian access to all affected areas.
In a statement on Thursday, the council expressed concern over the impact that access restrictions on commercial and humanitarian imports have on the humanitarian situation, Xinhua news agency reported.
It called on the parties to immediately facilitate access for these essential imports into the country and their distribution in order to reach the entire civilian population.
The Security Council called for the full and sustained opening of all Yemen’s ports and stressed the importance of keeping these functioning and open to all commercial and humanitarian imports, including food, fuel and medical imports.
The council also called for increased access to Sanaa airport for life-saving humanitarian supplies and movement of urgent humanitarian cases.
The council reaffirmed that denial of humanitarian access can constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
It noted that 22.2 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, 3.4 million more than last year.
The council voiced deep concern about the acute vulnerability of civilians to outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria, in light of acute malnutrition, the threat of famine and the weakness of Yemeni institutions.
The council called on all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, to avoid harming civilians, and to end the recruitment and use of children in conflict.
The council condemned “in the strongest possible terms” ballistic missile attacks by the Yemeni Houthis against Saudi Arabia, with particular concern for the attacks on Nov. 4 and Dec. 19, 2017, which deliberately endangered civilian areas.
It called on all UN member states to fully implement the arms embargo as required by relevant Security Council resolutions.
The council condemned the use of sea mines by non-nation state actors, including Houthi forces, and expressed deep concern that mines are prone to break free of their moorings and drift into international shipping channels, and thus represent a threat to commercial shipping and sea lines of communication.
The Security Council emphasized that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of an inclusive political solution, and called on all parties to the conflict to abandon preconditions and engage in good faith with the UN-led peace process in order to overcome obstacles and reach a political solution to the conflict.
—IANS
