Unicef chief condemns Yemen ‘carnage’ with 2,200 children killed

GENEVA: The UN slammed Tuesday the devastating impact of Yemen’s three-year conflict on children, with some 2,200 minors killed, and many more going hungry, forced to fight or dying from preventable diseases.

“The relentless conflict in Yemen has pushed a country already on the brink deep into the abyss,” warned Henrietta Fore, the executive director of the UN children’s agency.Fore, who has just returned from a visit to the war-ravaged country, said in a statement she had seen “what three years of intense war after decades of underdevelopment and chronic global indifference can do to children.”

Nearly 10,000 people have died since military coalition began fighting in Yemen in 2015 to restore the internationally recognised government to power after Iran-linked Huthi rebels took over Sanaa the year before.

UNICEF said Tuesday that at least 2,200 children had been killed and 3,400 others injured.“These are only numbers we have been able to verify. The actual figures could be even higher,” Fore said, insisting that “there is no justification for this carnage.”

But conflict deaths and injuries are only one part of the suffering inflicted on Yemen’s children. Fore pointed out to journalists in Geneva that millions of children were out of school and many were being forced to fight with different sides in the conflict.

Others were being married off, going hungry and dying from preventable diseases like cholera, she said.Children make up half of the some 22 million people in Yemen who rely on humanitarian aid to survive.

Fore warned that fears that the country’s healthcare and education systems would collapse had basically materialised, with international humanitarian aid the only thing warding off full-blown catastrophe.“The worry about collapse has now passed beyond that,” she said, pointing out that many health workers and teachers in the country had now gone without pay for two years.