Years of Conflict Pushing People in Yemen to Edge of Famine

By Oxfam

Families seek safety amidst fighting and epidemics; an end to war is the only solution to humanitarian crisis.

Four years ago Fatima Abdo Mohammed says she was trying to get her children to a safe place, away from fighting, when they stopped to rest and were hit by an airstrike.

“My sons were preparing food when we were hit…” she says. “Two of my children died, Aida and Moath. They were in their first years of school.”

Mohammed and her other four children are now in southern Yemen near Lahij, where they live in a one-room wooden house in the desert. They take care of a small herd of goats, and it is a difficult life. “We eat only rice for lunch,” Mohammed says.

“Previously, we were living in dignity,” but now, she says, “we are suffering here a lot. We do not have anything, we are without jobs.”

The people of Yemen are suffering through an extended war, which has displaced three million people, disrupted imports of vital goods like food, fuel, and medicine, and devastated the economy.

Roughly half of Yemen’s health facilities are not fully functional, while the country has faced a massive cholera epidemic [1.3 million suspected cases] that has killed 2,760 people.

With food prices rising exponentially and the economy collapsing, families can’t find work to afford food, and 15.8 million people do not know where they will get their next meal.

Many are living in near-famine conditions, and 24 million of the 30 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance.

Oxfam staff have met families that have married off girls – in some cases at a shockingly young age-- in exchange for money they need for food and medical care.