Spokesman Slams UN for Inaction on Human Tragedy in Yemen
The spokesman for Yemen’s Supreme Council for the Administration and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the United Nations’ failure to take any action to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the impoverished country.
Talat al-Sharjabi made the remarks in an interview with Yemen’s Arab-language al-Masira television network on Tuesday, following the recent report of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) about Yemeni children.
Sharjabi said the UN “talks about the victims of malnutrition without taking any steps to stop this human tragedy.”
He also noted that organizations affiliated with the UN do not talk about the direct cause of the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, nor do they hold the aggressor countries responsible.
The Yemeni official went on to say that the United Nations has removed the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from a list of violators of children's rights and has cooperated with Riyadh to escape punishment.
Pointing to UNICEF’s latest report, Sharjabi said the UN agency has spoken of 11,000 children killed or wounded, one-third of which were killed and injured only as a result of Saudi airstrikes.
“This is while our statistics show that 9,000 children were killed and injured as a result of direct airstrikes," he added.
On Monday, UNICEF said more than 11,000 Yemeni children have been killed or maimed since the Saudi-led aggression against the impoverished country began in 2015.
Thousands of children have lost their lives while hundreds of thousands more remain at risk of death from preventable disease or starvation, the UN agency said.
It also noted that at least 62 children have been killed or wounded since an UN-brokered truce, which lasted for six months, expired on October 2 after warring parties failed to agree on an extension.
Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.
The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.