UN appeals for $3.85bn as Yemen faces hunger crisis

The United Nations is calling for funding in an international donor meeting on Monday to save millions of people in Yemen from hunger.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), estimates that a sum of 3.85 billion dollars is needed this year to help the warn-torn country.

In 2020, countries only donated 1.9 billion dollars for people in Yemen, just over half of the funding that would have been needed, OCHA said ahead of the online pledging conference.

Out of the 29 million people in the impoverished country, 24 million need humanitarian aid, according to UN estimates.

A record 2.3 million children suffer from acute malnutrition and nearly 400,000 children below the age of five face death unless they receive urgent food aid.

Yemen has been ravaged by civil war since 2015.

The conflict has since become a proxy war in the region with Saudi Arabia leading a coalition fighting alongside the Yemeni government, while rival Iran backs Yemen’s Houthi rebels.