UNICEF Slams ’Carnage’ of Over 2,200 Yemeni Children
YemenExtra
SH.A.
The UNICEF chief slammed on Tuesday the “carnage” of over 2,200 children during the ongoing war in Yemen, warning that millions of other children are currently suffering the agonies of the humanitarian crises in the country.
The relentless conflict in Yemen has pushed a country already on the brink deep into the abyss,” warned Henrietta Fore, the executive director of the UN children’s agency.
Fore, who has just returned from a visit to the war-ravaged country, said in a statement to journalists in Geneva she had seen “what three years of intense war after decades of underdevelopment and chronic global indifference can do to children.”
Nearly 10,000 people have died since the US-Saudi aggression began on Yemen in 2015.
Unicef said on Tuesday that at least 2,200 children had been killed and 3,400 others injured. “These are only numbers we have been able to verify. The actual figures could be even higher,” Fore said, insisting that “there is no justification for this carnage”. But conflict deaths and injuries are only one part of the suffering inflicted on Yemen’s children.
Fore pointed out that millions of children were out of school and many others are being forced to fight with different sides in the conflict, being married off, going hungry and dying from preventable diseases like cholera.
Children make up half of the some 22 million people in Yemen who rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
Fore warned that fears that the country’s healthcare and education systems would collapse had basically materialised, with international humanitarian aid the only thing warding off full-blown catastrophe. “The worry about collapse has now passed beyond that,” she said.
She pointed out that many health workers and teachers in the country had now gone without pay for two years. Some 1,500 schools have been damaged in airstrikes and shellings in the past three years.
“The needs are enormous,” she said. In a bid to avoid full collapse, Unicef and the World Bank are providing some nine million people with small amounts of cash in a bid to allow them to purchase bare necessities like food and medicine.
This is particularly vital in the port city of Hodeidah, where an ongoing offensive by the US-Saudi aggression has sent prices skyrocketing.
“In Hodeidah, as in the rest of the country, the need for peace has never been more urgent,” Fore said.
The UNICEF chief called on all the warring side to rally behind efforts by the UN envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths to negotiate a settlement for the conflict in Hodeidah and to resume peace talks for the entire country.
Source: Press TV