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Yemen

Yemen’s Triple Emergency: COVID-19, Conflict, and a Collapsing International Response

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Executive Summary

In Yemen, COVID-19 is creating an unprecedented emergency within the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The pandemic has arrived in Yemen after five years of conflict, which has led to widespread damage and destruction of hospitals, markets, water and sanitation systems, and other civilian infrastructure, making access to clean water, medicine, and food insufficient and unpredictable for most Yemenis. The conflict has caused an estimated 233,000 deaths, with the majority due to a lack of food, health services and infrastructure -- an alarming sign of the weakness of basic services in the country.

IRC expects the COVID-19 outbreak in Yemen to be one of the most severe globally. The immediate harm from the disease and its wider, life-threatening impacts on livelihoods, food insecurity, and gender-based violence are set to exacerbate vulnerability. Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, warns the death toll from COVID-19 could "exceed the combined toll of war, disease, and hunger over the last five years."

Despite the steep challenges in Yemen, the humanitarian response has proven effective in the past in halting the spread of other diseases and health crises. The humanitarian response stemmed the largest cholera outbreak in modern history and brought Yemen back from the brink of famine, including by helping to cure a higher percentage of children with severe acute malnutrition than any comparable response. With robust funding, this humanitarian infrastructure and expertise can be effectively mobilized to address COVID-19.

Yet, in the face of an unprecedented threat, the international community has turned its back on Yemen. The response has not only been vastly insufficient to address the magnitude of COVID-19, but also represents a step back from previous commitments to the overall humanitarian crisis. Without a step change in the speed, scale and nature of the international community's response, the virus will soon overstretch the response, which 24.3 million Yemenis -- 80% of the population -- rely on to survive. Halfway through the year, Yemen has received only 17% of the funding required, while the annual pledging conference yielded record low commitments. At the same time, vulnerabilities are further exacerbated by the U.S. suspension of humanitarian aid due to impediments to principled humanitarian aid delivery in areas controlled by Ansar Allah (Houthi) authorities, where most Yemenis in need of humanitarian aid live.

Never before have Yemenis in need faced so little support from the international community -- or so many simultaneous challenges as Yemen sits on the edge of famine, large-scale conflict, cholera, and now a global pandemic.

IRC's key recommendations:

  1. All donors should move quickly to provide additional and flexible humanitarian financing.

  2. All donors should review any reduction of humanitarian assistance given the threat of COVID-19.

  3. International donors and UN member states should maintain pressure on all parties to the conflict to remove bureaucratic constraints on humanitarian action, including those related to COVID-19.

  4. International donors and local authorities should work together to improve the economic situation.

  5. International donors, member states, and UN leadership should press for an immediate ceasefire as well as commitments towards a political settlement and accountability for violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).