Many Yemeni kids will die of starvation due to shortage of funds: UNICEF

Team Udayavani, Jun 27, 2020, 2:10 PM IST

UNICEF on Friday, June 26, said that around 2.4 million children in Yemen could be malnourished by the end of 2020 due to shortage in humanitarian funding.

In a statement, the organization said that within the next six months around 30,000 Yemeni children younger than five years could suffer from severe and ‘life-threatening’ acute malnutrition

Sara Beysolow Nyanti, the Unicef representative to Yemen, said, “If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation and many will die. The international community will be sending a message that the lives of children in a nation devastated by conflict, disease and economic collapse, simply do not matter”

Unicef is seeking aid worth $461 million for its humanitarian programs with an additional $53 million just for dealing with the coronavirus health emergency.

However, the organization said that so far it had received just 10 per cent of the funds required for the Covid-19 response and around 39 percent of the humanitarian aid funding.