By Julien Harneis
In this last week, I was in two places in Yemen that exemplify the unnecessary suffering of this uncivil war. On Monday, in a center for the rehabilitation of the injured, in the capital Sana’a, I met wounded children. Brave girls and boys struggling to master their broken bodies and patched up limbs. Three days later in Taiz, a city under siege since May, I was in a battle-scarred hospital, only a quarter of which was still intact. Gaunt doctors and nurses comforted mothers giving birth in wards without electricity or drugs. Of twenty-two health facilities in the city only four are open, and these are struggling to provide even the most basic treatment.
These children are among the more than 1,108 injured in the last year, but at least they are alive: Over 747 more have died, in airstrikes, from bombs, bullets and the explosive remnants of a war they did not chose to be a part of.
But far more risk dying from disease, than from bullets. The destruction of health services, the implosion of the economy, spiraling food and fuel costs and the lack of clean water means that children are at risk from what would normally have been easily preventable and relatively harmless diseases. 2.5 million children risk suffering from diarrhea and another 2.6 million children could well miss vaccination against measles. 1.3 million children are at risk of becoming acutely malnourished, of whom 320,000 will suffer from severe acute malnutrition over the next year if the situation does not improve drastically. UNICEF estimates that 10,000 more children, under the age of five, will die than if there had not been this war.
The health system is on the brink of collapse, but somehow in most of the country it just about hangs together thanks to the bravery of its staff, the determined work of aid organizations and the support of donors. Crucially the warring parties have, so far, tacitly agreed not to drag the social services into their struggle....
What can be done to protect the children in Yemen?
The warring parties and those advising them, including the United Kingdom, must work to ensure that civilians are neither killed nor injured, and that schools and hospitals are not bombed. This means that indiscriminate weapons such as cluster munitions, random shelling from mortars, artillery and these vast bombs that shake the cities of Yemen should not be used where civilians live or gather together. Far too many civilians have been struck down in their homes, in markets, at weddings and in hospitals.
It is difficult to work here, difficult to get into the country, the borders are closed, it is cut off by sea, No airlines fly here. Humanitarians here risk to fall victim to the fighting and are the targets of kidnapping. But the needs are so great, far more than we can at this moment cover. The humanitarian organizations that are here stand with the people of Yemen, but they need far greater resources, to protect them from the results of this brutal conflict. Donor countries must double the funding to this crisis.
The different parties to the conflict need to be convinced to keep health services, hospitals and health centers neutral. If this does not happen they will fragment and collapse. Not only will that lead to the death of children today but it will leave them vulnerable for decades to come. We have learnt from the Ebola crisis in West Africa, how the legacy of war can sap health systems, leaving people vulnerable to pandemics years after the last bullet has been fired. We must prevent this from happening again in Yemen. If the social services can be kept neutral, donors including the British government, should support them and fund local doctors, nurses and health centers.
The United Kingdom has influence on the warring sides in Yemen, it should use that to reduce the suffering of children here. It must pressure the warring parties to stop the use of indiscriminate weapons in civilian areas. United Kingdom’s funding to Humanitarian organizations should be doubled, and that assistance should be allowed to support essential local state health services. And above all the United Kingdom must push for peace, the only true end to this catastrophe.
