The Yemen Crisis

By: Dhriti Guruprasad

As the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic, the country of Yemen is suffering the worst humanitarian crisis it has ever experienced in a century. We all remember the infamous Bengal famine of 1770, carefully crafted by Winston Churchill, which took the lives of 10 million people. But this is worse.

As we spend 10 minutes of our day scrolling through our social media, a child in Yemen dies because he/she doesn't have access to the basic resources required to sustain human life. Pictures of infants and toddlers, barely clinging to life have been circulating all over the internet. And it pains me to see that it is not getting the attention it deserves.

How did Yemen and its people come to this? On 22 March 2015, the people of Yemen had to prepare themselves for the next 5 years because a deadly civil war had striked their country. The conflict had been widely seen as an extension of the Iran– Saudi Arabia proxy conflict and as a means to combat Iranian influence in the region. And recent reports also told us that the USA has been providing bombs to aid the Saudi forces and airstrikes in Yemen. And in 2020, it was followed by a devastating Cholera outbreak which was so widespread that it was successful in pumping out 5000 cases every single day. Soon after, Yemenis started to feel the lack of the bare necessities. No food. No water and constant fear of becoming the spoils of war. Just because the war started in 2015 doesn't mean Yemen was flourishing before, the crisis had begun way back in 2011 and has stood strong up until 2020. The cry for food and water has been silenced by the sounds of the airstrikes. Around 2 million children have fallen prey to the monster that is malnutrition and they require serious help. The health workers in Yemen are not being paid for their services. A million children were out of school even before the pandemic hit and now more have dropped out. UNICEF has predicted that this will be worse than the Bengal Famine and the saddest part is that the media is not willing to give it the coverage it deserves.

Yemen needs our help. And it needs our help NOW. And we can help by donating the money that you and I were going to spend on baking supplies during quarantine. This money could feed one or two of those 12 million starving children.

Let's stand with Yemen. They need our support.