The world is currently suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of the second world war with over 20 million people left to starve across four countries. Stephen O’Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs told the security council in New York on Friday that “without collective and coordinated global efforts, “people will simply starve to death” and “many more will suffer and die from disease”.
Without as a major injection of money, he said, “children would be stunted by severe malnutrition and would not be able to go to school, gains in economic development would be reversed and “livelihoods, futures, and hope lost”.
Stephen O’Brien also said the largest humanitarian crisis so far was in Yemen where two-thirds of the population or 18.8 million people are in severe need of assistance. More than 7 million people are starving don’t know where their next meal will come from. “That is three million people more than in January,” he said.
During his recent visit to Yemen, O’Brien said he met senior officials of the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels who currently control the Yemeni capital Sana’a, and all promised access for aid.
“Yet all parties to the conflict are arbitrarily denying sustained humanitarian access and politicize aid,” he said, warning if that behavior did not change “they must be held accountable for the inevitable famine, unnecessary deaths and associated amplification in suffering that will follow”.
The UN humanitarian chief also paid a visit to the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, which has already been destroyed by a three-year civil war in splitting from Sudan, and said “the situation is worse than it has ever been.”
“The famine in South Sudan is man-made,” he said. “Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine — as are those not intervening to make the violence stop.”
O’Brien said more than 7.5 million people need aid, up by 1.4 million from last year, and about 3.4 million South Sudanese are displaced by fighting including almost 200,000 who have fled the country since January.
“More than one million children are estimated to be acutely malnourished across the country, including 270,000 children who face the imminent risk of death should they not be reached in time with assistance,” he said. “Meanwhile, the cholera outbreak that began in June 2016 has spread to more locations.”
In Somalia, which O’Brien also visited, said that more than half the population or 6.2 million people are in severe need of humanitarian assistance and protection, which includes the 2.9 million who are at risk of severe famine and are in deep need of immediate help “to save or sustain their lives.”
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