90% of Yemeni children need aid, NGO says

Save the Children, which is a nongovernmental organization, says about 90% of children in Yemen need emergency humanitarian aid due to the ongoing Saudi aggression against the impoverished country.

The humanitarian organization said 10 million children are still suffering in Yemen while the international community remains silent about their plight.

Save the Children also condemned governments who choose to support military action in Yemen and put children’s lives in danger.

“An entire generation of children – the future of Yemen – is being abandoned to their fate,” said Save the Children’s Country Director in Yemen Edward Santiago.

“For millions of children here, the terror of airstrikes and shelling, and the destruction of everything around them has become a daily fact of life. This must not be allowed to continue,” he added.

He also noted that the impoverished country of Yemen was suffering from a humanitarian crisis before the Saudi aggression, but the situation now has turned worse and “thousands more children’s lives are at real risk as long as the fighting continues and the delivery of vital humanitarian aid and commercial supplies continues to be obstructed.”

The international nongovernmental organization said in the new briefing note, Yemen’s Children Suffering in Silence, that most areas in Yemen face acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel, since the onset of the Saudi aggression, adding that the Arab country suffers one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

“One in three Yemeni children under five are now acutely malnourished, with nearly 10 million without access to clean water and more than eight million no longer having access to even basic health care,” Santiago said.

The report added that the war in Yemen has also caused psychological harm to children.

“A Save the Children study of 150 children in Aden and Lahij governorates found 70% suffering from symptoms associated with distress and trauma, including anxiety, low self-esteem, feelings of sadness, and lack of concentration,” Santiago said.

Expressing concern over the recruitment of children by armed groups, he added, “Worryingly, children are increasingly being recruited into armed groups, abducted and detained, and are at risk from thousands of newly-laid landmines.”

Santiago also slammed rich countries for “turning a blind eye to children’s suffering” and even “making billions of dollars by selling weapons that continue to be used against civilians.”

He warned that “UN Security Council resolutions are being ignored and the conflict goes on with complete disregard for international law and the protection of civilians, particularly children.”

Santiago urged more aid to the suffering people of Yemen as well as exerting “more diplomatic pressure on those fighting in Yemen to end the conflict.”

Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen in March last year in a bid to bring the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh, back to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

About 9,400 people have been killed since the onset of the aggression.

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