UNICEF’s Executive Director, Catherine Russell’s statement to the High-Level Pledging Event on the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen today.
About Yemen:
- Today, four out of five children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
- More than 10,200 children have been killed or injured since 2015 when the conflict escalated.
- Nearly 8.5 million children don’t have safe water, sanitation, or hygiene.
- More than 10 million children and almost 5 million women cannot properly access health services or receive medical attention.
- Some 2.2 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished and more than half a million suffer from severe acute malnutrition.
UNICEF and partners are working across Yemen every day to reach children and their families:
- We have provided safe drinking water to 8.8 million people, including 5.3 million children.
- We are helping more than 2 million people in remote areas to access public health care centres and we are providing vaccination to at least 4 million children.
- We are providing emergency cash transfers to almost 1.4 million families every quarter - a lifeline for 9 million people.
Alongside our partners, we will continue to deliver for Yemen’s children. But we are running out of funds. UNICEF urgently needs $240 million to support our work over the next six months.
