UN Warns: Saudi-led Coalition’s Import Inspections Blocking Aid to Yemen
Local Editor
The United Nations [UN] humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Johannes van der Klaauw on Friday called on the Saudi-led coalition to simplify import inspections, warning that they were blocking vital commercial goods and aid.
Van der Klaauw warned that the import inspections, introduced under an arms embargo slapped on Houthi rebels last month [April], were hampering access for vital goods.
"The arms embargo and its inspection regime results in commercial goods, be it by air or by ship, no longer reaching the country," he told journalists in the Swiss city of Geneva via conference call from Yemen.
"The current inspection regime needs to be simplified, needs to be faster so that commercial, but also humanitarian imports of fuel [and] food and other life-sustaining necessities can resume," he further said.
Furthermore, Van der Klaauw stressed that getting more fuel into war-torn Yemen was essential, not only for transporting aid around the country but also to keep fuel-guzzling generators humming in water stations and hospitals.
"Unless additional fuel is made available in the next few weeks ... hospitals will shut down, water and sanitation systems will come to a halt, telecom services will end, power supplies will be cut across the country," he said, pointing out that in Yemen, "There is no electricity, everything works on generators that need fuel."
Saudi Arabia began its US-led military aggression against Yemen on March 26 - without a UN mandate - in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement, and to restore power to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a close ally of Saudi Arabia.
According to the latest UN figures, the US-led Saudi military aggression has so far claimed the lives of over 1,400 people and injured close to 6,000 people.
