Date: Sat, 3 May 2014 23:17:33 +0200
<http://www.timesofoman.com/Columns/1898/We-have-forgotten-the-crisis-Yemen-
is-facing> We have forgotten the crisis Yemen is facing
by <http://www.timesofoman.com/MorefromColumnists/521/David-Miliband> David
Miliband |
MAY 3, 2014 , 6 : 32 pm GST |
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Yemen is one of the most water-starved countries in the world. Its rapid
population growth rate of more than three per cent a year means shortages
are set to continue and intensify driving further conflicts across the
country. Yemen's capital, Sanaa risks becoming the world's first capital to
run out of water
On 27 January 2010, as UK Foreign Secretary, I chaired a meeting in London
that brought ministers from 21 countries together to discuss the myriad
problems facing Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. We launched
the Friends of Yemen, a grouping of states and global institutions that
through regular meetings and systematic, structured engagement was to help
the country tackle the political, social and economic causes of those
problems.
The Friends of Yemen has met five times since, and today will again gather
in London. Much has changed in Yemen over the past four years. It has
undergone a significant political transition and recently concluded a
national dialogue process that will pave the way for a new constitution,
general elections and a federal system of government.
But the appalling humanitarian crisis in the country continues to receive
little or no attention from the international community, despite the fact
that it ranks alongside the Syria crisis in scale and threatens to undermine
Yemen's fragile political process. Simply put, stability in Yemen is not
possible if more than half of the population do not know where their next
meal is coming from, or cannot access safe water and sanitation. Such is the
challenge confronting the country.
Some 14.7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, hundreds of
thousands of them driven from their homes by successive waves of violence
over the past decade. Yemen's malnutrition levels are the second-highest on
the planet: more than 4.5 million people are severely food insecure, and
around half of Yemen's children under five are stunted. These figures are
terrifying. Yet Yemen is a forgotten crisis. Amid so much need and
suffering, the UN's appeal for Yemen for 2014 is just 11 per cent funded.
Previous appeals for the country do not instil confidence. Last year, the UN
received just 53 per cent of the money it needed to help Yemen, down 5 per
cent from 2012.
Progress is not impossible. The Friends of Yemen knows well the factors -
endemic poverty, chronic underdevelopment, poor governance, demographic
pressure, environmental stress, political instability - that have brought
the country to this point, and has, with the government of Yemen, taken
steps to try to address them. The food-security and nutrition situations
have improved in areas with substantial humanitarian agency presences. The
International Rescue Committee's programmes in the southern region of Aden
and Abyan are providing hundreds of thousands of people with health,
nutrition and water services.
But Yemen remains in the throes of a complex emergency. A further shock
could easily reverse these gains and could emanate from any one of a number
of sources. A quarter of a million of those in need in Yemen are refugees
from Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries. Their presence in Yemen's urban
areas has placed a huge strain on its overstretched, under-resourced basic
services and further heightened competition for jobs in an employment market
struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of Yemenis recently deported
from Saudi Arabia. Economic prospects are so meagre that many returnees,
refugees and Horn of Africa migrants attempt to enter Saudi Arabia illegally
through trafficking networks, leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping, robbery
and rape.
Secondly, Yemen is one of the most water-starved countries in the world. Its
rapid population growth rate of more than three per cent a year means
shortages are set to continue and intensify, driving further conflicts
across the country; hydrologists warn that in just over a decade Yemen's
capital, Sanaa - one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the
planet - risks becoming the world's first capital to run out of water.
Oil resources, Yemen's main source of revenue, are also dwindling, and the
pipelines that transport its hydrocarbons are vulnerable to sabotage
attacks: last year, for the first time in nearly three decades, Yemen spent
more money importing oil than it generated from exports.
Finally, the country's miserable poverty rate, worse today than when the
Friends of Yemen was established, has allowed Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula to suck in Yemen's youth with promises of cash and status -
especially in the south, where a five-year-old insurgency continues to
uproot families and thwart Yemenis' efforts to build better lives. Tribal
and religious battles in the north also rage on, casting a shadow over the
country's political transition. A long-term, durable solution must also be
found for the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Yemen. All stakeholders
in the region must work together to alleviate the plight of migrant workers,
and donors must meet the needs of those returning and mitigate the impact on
Yemen's economy. No one is under any illusion as to the scale of this
crisis. But the emergency on the Arabian Peninsula lies largely in darkness,
driven down the global agenda by conflicts, disasters and priorities
elsewhere. The people of Yemen deserve better.
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