The Middle East has been on edge for many years now. “Presently, all eyes are on Syria, Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. People think that the situation in Yemen is stable, but it’s not. It’s getting worse by the day. Yemen must not be forgotten,” says Ahmad Algohbary, a Yemeni journalist who moved to the Netherlands recently because covering the conflict and telling heartbreaking stories became too emotionally draining for him.
People are exhausted. The conflict that began in 2014—when Houthi forces took over the capital city Sanaa and the government—has left Yemen in crutches. The UN-brokered truce in 2022 came as a hope, but the pause in fighting is at risk due to recent Houthi actions, threatening to destabilize the situation in Yemen yet again,” says Algohbary. The truce is far from perfect. It falls short of a comprehensive plan to negotiate a lasting peace in Yemen.
The humanitarian crisis remains dire. As per UN agencies— based on March 2024 estimates—an estimated 4.5 million people are currently displaced, nearly 21.6 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, more than 4.5 million children do not attend schools and nearly 18 million Yemenis don’t know if or when they will eat another meal.
“If bullets and missiles don’t kill them, hunger and starvation will,” says Algohbary. More than 2.7 million children are acutely malnourished. “Once, I spent two days in a camp in the middle of a desert. I was shocked to see that people were eating flour mixed with water with some tea. They were not getting enough protein. They had not eaten chicken, meat or rice in a long, long time. Many women were cooking some leaves and herbs and giving them to children,” recalls Algohbary.
There is no strategy to cope with food insecurity in Yemen that has not been tried, says Muneer Bin Wabar, who has over 15 years of expertise in Yemeni affairs. “Daily life in Yemen is in a state of continuous deterioration,” he adds.
The economy is facing mounting crises. “There is a sharp decline in state revenues, a continuous deterioration in the value of the national currency, a lack of confidence in investments, and a near-total paralysis in the maintenance and development of infrastructure,” elaborates Bin Wabar. “A very large proportion of the population still depends on aid from international organizations, remittances from relatives abroad or financial assistance from donors,” he adds.
Nearly 19.7 million people lack access to basic health services; only 52 per cent of health facilities are fully functioning and of those, most lack specialty physicians, equipment and basic medicines. “This means either death from treatable diseases or incurring the exorbitant cost of travel and treatment abroad,” says Bin Wabar.
Children are the most vulnerable as they can easily fall victim to mines and explosive devices. The psychological effects of being deprived of one or both parents or of displacement, migration and harsh conditions are profound. Education is in a dire state. Teachers’ salaries are not regular or even sufficient to meet their needs. There may not be enough textbooks and proper educational infrastructure. This means a generation that is less educated, less skilled and therefore less able to build a bright future, adds Bin Wabar.
Asmaa Waguih, an independent photojournalist based in Cairo, visited Yemen at different times regularly since 2016 and has been reporting on the civil war. It always intrigued her how only a small number of foreign journalists was keen to report on Yemen, despite the staggering scale of the war and why the Western media called the conflict in Yemen an ‘invisible war’ or a ‘forgotten war’.
During her initial visits, she encountered the after-effects of air raids. She remembers how there was no electricity, and people were forced to use solar panels. Gun-loving culture is deeply rooted in Yemen and Waguih remembers people freely buying guns from open markets. In many shops, young boys were working as sellers. It was common to find people walking around wearing traditional clothes with Kalashnikovs casually strung on their shoulders. She remembers how most people were extremely poor. “They have oil and gas, but Yemen is still the poorest country in the Arab world. The country has really suffered due to years of war. There is not enough food. The education system has collapsed. People are not able to send their children to schools. Many women and children are sustaining on humanitarian aid. I noticed that families were moving from the Houthi-controlled areas because they did not want their sons to be recruited by the Houthis,” she says.