GENEVA // Yemen’s peace talks next week are an opportunity to bring in urgent humanitarian aid for millions of people who have been deprived of vital supplies since the war escalated nine months ago, the UN humanitarian chief has said.
“In Yemen I’m very hopeful that December 15 will herald a new peaceful context in which we can very much extend [aid] – both rapidly and in volume – to all the people in need,” Stephen O’Brien said.
“While just over 21 million people have some form of humanitarian need across Yemen, the immediate vital needs encompass something in the region of 5 million people for food, water, shelter and urgent medical care on all sides of the conflict lines.”
The United Nations will launch peace talks in Switzerland on Tuesday, when a seven-day ceasefire is expected to begin.
Yemeni prime minister Khaled Bahah said on Friday that his government was “determined to stop the war ”, which has killed 6,000 people, according to Saudi state television.
He was speaking in Riyadh where he met Saudi defence minister Prince Mohammad bin Salman and a group of negotiators from Yemen’s government who are preparing to fly to Switzerland for the peace talks.
Also on Friday, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebels said the group had submitted names of their negotiating team to the United Nations for next week’s peace talks in Switzerland.
Reports had circulated that Houthi rebel leaders had been dragging their feet and refusing to name their delegates in an apparent bid to further stall dialogue.
But UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has said he was certain the Iran-backed faction would show up for the talks to be held at an undisclosed location in Switzerland.
Gulf Arab states called on Thursday for an international reconstruction conference for Yemen after any deal to end its civil war, which has killed 6,000 people and caused widespread damage to the economy and infrastructure.
A Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states, including the UAE, is fighting against the Houthis with the aim of restoring the internationally-recognised government of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi to power. The coalition’s military intervention began in March when it launched air strikes on targets belonging to the rebels and allied renegade members of the Yemeni army loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The World Food Programme said earlier this week that a lorry carrying food was expected to reach the Mudhafar district in Taez in the coming days. Two convoys of assistance have already reached the city’s Salah and Al Qahira areas.
City residents are living in dire conditions under a Houthi siege.
“We are overcoming enormous access challenges to deliver much-needed assistance into the city where the humanitarian situation has deteriorated over the past couple of months,” said WFP’s Yemen representative and country director, Purnima Kashyap.
“WFP needs freedom and safety of movement inside the country to reach as many people as possible with food assistance before they fall deeper into hunger.” She added that WFP, funded entirely by voluntary contributions, urgently needed funding for its operations too.
Taez is one of 10 provinces – out of Yemen’s 22 – that are in the grip of severe food insecurity at the so-called “emergency” level – one step below famine on the five-point Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale. At least one-in-five households in the area do not have enough food to lead a healthy life, have lost their livelihoods and are facing life-threatening rates of acute malnutrition.
Yemen relies on imports for almost all its food and all of its medicine, but a near-total blockade slowed shipments to a trickle for months this year, as the Saudi-led coalition inspected shipments in a bid to thwart any arms deliveries to the Houthis.
Speaking on Thursday, UN humanitarian chief Mr O’Brien said there had been a significant increase in access for humanitarian supplies and a new UN verification and inspection mechanism would soon start up, allowing unfettered access for commercial ships.
Aid workers have long said that only a return of commercial shipping can bring the volume of supplies needed for Yemen. Fuel has been in especially short supply, with a knock-on effect on electricity supplies, water pumping, hospitals and inflation.
Mr O’Brien said the new system, which involves the United Nations checking any suspect cargoes, would be up and running “in days or weeks, not months”.
“It is a confidence measure, in compliance with the [UN] resolutions, in order to enable the commercial shipping supplies to get back to volume.”
* Agencies