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Yemen urges dissolution, replacement of Arab League over its ‘shameful’ stances amid Saudi war

An extraordinary session of the Arab League foreign ministers meets to discuss the situation in Palestine at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, on April 21, 2019. (File photo by AP)

Yemen’s Foreign Ministry has called for the dissolution of the Arab League over its “shameful” stances and replacing it with another organization that lives up to the level of the Arab nations’ aspirations.

“The Arab League is a name associated in the mind of the Arab people with calamities and shameful and humiliating stances. It has failed to earn the confidence of our great nation,” deputy foreign minister Hussein al-Ezzi said in a tweet on Sunday.

Noting that Yemen was one of the founding members of the Arab League, al-Ezzi said “Sana’a, once again, proposes to abolish it permanently and to establish a better alternative under the name of ‘The Association of Arab States’ with its headquarters in Egypt or Yemen.”

In recent years, the Arab League has turned into an organization overwhelmingly dominated by Saudi Arabia, which has been leading a deadly war on Yemen since 2015.

The war, waged by Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, intended to eliminate Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement and reinstall former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh. The aggression has failed to reach its goals and has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people.

Millions of Yemenis face rising hunger: UN

On Sunday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) warned that millions of Yemenis are facing rising hunger due to reduced food rations.

“Displaced families in Yemen face rising hunger due to the cut of food assistance,” the UNCHR said on Twitter, noting that over half of the country’s four million internally displaced people “live in areas categorized as an emergency food situation.”

“In January, millions will receive reduced food ration,” the UNCHR quoted the United Nations World Food Programme in Yemen as saying.

Last month, the World Food Program warned of a surge in hunger in Yemen as food stocks in the country were “running dangerously low.”

The WFP said it needs $813 million to continue to provide aid to Yemen’s most vulnerable groups through May, and an additional $1.97 billion to deliver basic food assistance to families on the brink of famine.

According to the latest UN figures, the ongoing war has left about 16.2 million Yemenis – more than half of Yemen’s population – facing acute hunger, with half of Yemeni children under five (2.3 million) faced with the risk of malnutrition.

The UN refers to the situation in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” with more than 20 million people in need of some form of humanitarian assistance or protection.

Yemenis protest Saudi seizure of fuels ships

On Sunday, a crowd of Yemenis, including the personnel of the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC), gathered in front of the UN office in the capital Sana’a to condemn the Saudi seizure of fuel ships, warning against an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.

In a statement, the protesters said the continued seizure of fuel ships “contributes to the aggravation of the environment situation and accumulation of waste on all streets and in neighborhoods of the capital,” causing the spread of diseases.

They also urged the UN to “immediately interfere and exert pressure” on the member countries of the Saudi war on Yemen to “allow the entry of fuel ships.”

As part of its economic war, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed a siege on Yemen, preventing fuel shipments from reaching the country, while looting the impoverished nation’s resources.

Yemen’s Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmad Abdullah Dares has warned that the Saudi seizure of ships carrying petroleum products could lead to the suspension of the service sectors and cause “a humanitarian catastrophe.”


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