Hawzah News Agency (Yemen) - Jamie McGoldrick, the world body’s Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, said on Friday, December 16, that almost half of the country’s 22 provinces had officially been rated as being in an emergency food situation.

The course of the plight has been translated to a five-point scale. The situation places Yemen in the fourth stage.

Yemen’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi resigned last year in spite of calls on him to revise the decision. The Riyadh-allied former head of state has been seeking to forcibly return to power since March 2015 on the back of the Saudi warfare.

The UN official said, “Throughout the whole of this country kids are dying.”

Eight out of 10 Yemeni children are stunted by malnutrition and every 10 minutes a child dies due to preventable diseases, UN figures have shown.

Lack of funding and the fortunes of war have prevented the United Nations from properly distributing foodstuff through the country, where the offensive has left more than half of its 28 million people “food insecure,” with seven million of them enduring hunger.

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