Sanaa: Dozens of Yemeni children were killed or injured in the Yemeni civil war in January and February this year, as the ongoing conflict continued to escalate in the country and, as usual, children have been the first to suffer.
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said in a report on its official website that at least 47 children were killed or injured during the first two months of this year in several areas in Yemen.
UNICEF representative to Yemen, Philippe Duamelle said, more than 10,000 children have been killed or injured since the outbreak of civil war in Yemen, and the number is feared to be even higher.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula, has witnessed a conflict since 2014 between forces loyal to the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels. The conflict escalated with the intervention of Saudi Arabia at the head of a military coalition in March 2015 to halt the progress of the Houthis after their control of the capital, Sanaa.
Until the end of 2021, the war claimed the lives of 377,000 people and cost Yemen’s economy 126 billion dollars in losses, and most of the population, which numbered about 30 million people, became dependent on aid, in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, according to the United Nations.
This war has caused collapses in the health, economy, education and other sectors in Yemen, and more than 3.3 million displaced people live in schools and camps, where diseases such as cholera are spreading due to the scarcity of clean water.
More than 2,500 schools in the country have become unusable, according to UNICEF, as they have been destroyed, converted for military purposes, or used as shelters for the displaced. The United Nations has previously estimated that nearly two million children are out of school.
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that the conflict has caused dire consequences for millions of children and families, stressing, “It is time for a sustainable political solution so that Yemenis and their children can live in the peace they deserve.
In an annual report to the Security Council in January 2022, UN experts said they found evidence that the Houthis used several summer camps and a mosque to spread their ideology and recruit children to fight the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. coalition.
1,406 children aged between 10 and 17 were recruited by the Houthis who died on the battlefield in 2020, and 562 child soldiers were killed between January and May 2021.
UNICEF in Yemen on Friday took to Twitter and wrote, “Children in Yemen are not starving because of lack of food, but because their families cannot afford food.”
UNICEF added that without urgent action, it could plunge millions into starvation. “The impact of the economic collapse on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen cannot be underestimated,” it said.
