Local Editor
The Saudi-led coalition’s restrictions on imports to Yemen have worsened the dire humanitarian situation of Yemeni civilians, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
According the rights group, the restrictions, in violation of international humanitarian law, have delayed and diverted fuel tankers, closed a critical port, and stopped life-saving goods for the population from entering seaports controlled by Houthi-Saleh forces.
“The Saudi-led coalition should end its unlawful restrictions on imports to Yemen,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Before even more children suffer and die of preventable causes, the warring parties need to allow fuel, food, and medicine to reach the families that need it.”
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, is enduring the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Malnutrition and disease, to which children are particularly susceptible, are widespread. An estimated 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished. Half the country’s hospitals are closed, 15.7 million people lack access to clean water, and the country has over700,000 suspected cholera infections, increasing by about 5,000 cases daily. From late April 2017 to mid-August, nearly 500 children died and 200,000 fell ill from cholera, a disease spread by contaminated water.
The coalition has also restricted fuel from entering the war-torn country.
“The Saudi-led coalition’s cruel restrictions on fuel to Yemen, effectively shutting water taps and hospitals, have turned an impoverished country into a humanitarian disaster,” Van Esveld said.
On March 4, the coalition diverted a ship carrying 129 containers of vegetable oil and blankets for two UN humanitarian agencies, from Hodeida to the Saudi port of Jizan, and held it there for nearly three weeks after completing an inspection on March 13. UNVIM had already cleared the ship.
Save the Children, an international relief agency, said in March that coalition warships had blocked three of its medical supply shipments from reaching Hodeida in January and February, and rerouted the shipments to the southern port of Aden, which is controlled by the Yemeni regime, delaying their delivery to beneficiaries by up to three months.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
