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Red Cross Doubles Budget in Yemen over Food, Health Crises

Red Cross Doubles Budget in Yemen over Food, Health Crises
folder_openYemen access_time6 years ago
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Local Editor

The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] is increasing the budget for its activities in Yemen to over 90 million US dollars in response to aggravating humanitarian, food security and healthcare crises, the ICRC official spokesperson in Yemen told Xinhua on Thursday.

Red Cross Doubles Budget in Yemen over Food, Health Crises

"The budget increase seeks to focus on the healthcare side in the first place and also to boost response to the needs of the ongoing food crisis," Adnan Hizam, ICRC spokesman in Yemen, told Xinhua in Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Hizam said that the recent doubling of the budget this year from 48 to 90.7 million dollars will help the ICRC address the restrictions imposed by warring parties in Yemen on the entry of food, commodities and medicines, especially surgical materials.

Relatively, the United Nations said that more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and nearly 42,000 others injured since the war in the impoverished country escalated in March 2015.

The ICRC funding still falls short, as the UN co-hosted in late April with the governments of Switzerland and Sweden a major international conference in Geneva to appeal for 2.1 billion dollars to avert famine in Yemen this year.

However, the donor countries pledged only 1.1 billion dollars for humanitarian aid in Yemen, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who warned that a Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes of preventable causes such as conflict, hunger and disease.

The ICRC workers in Yemen also face criticism campaigns and accusations from rival parties and are denied access to detainees related to the conflict.

"We will also protect civilians, support service institutions, check on detainees and their detention conditions and try to reconnect them with their families," the ICRC spokesperson in Yemen added.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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