NEW YORK: The United Nations and the UN Security Council made moves to seize a “window of opportunity” to ease the crisis in war-ravaged Yemen, as aid chiefs warned there was much work to do to avoid a looming famine.
The UN’s special envoy to the country said the Saudi-backed government and the Ansarullah fighters had given him “firm assurances” they will attend peace talks in Sweden, as he briefed the UN Security Council in New York.
“I believe they are genuine,” special envoy Martin Griffiths said, adding that he will travel to Sanaa next week to meet leaders and lay the groundwork for talks he says will take place shortly.
He said he would be happy to escort the Ansarullah delegation to the consultations if necessary. In September, UN-sponsored talks in Geneva collapsed when the Ansarullah fighters failed to show up.
“I think we’re almost there, I don’t know if we’ll make it, I don’t know what the odds are, but we need to focus to make sure nothing disrupts the path to that meeting,” Griffiths said.
Britain will present a draft resolution on Yemen to the UN Security Council on Monday, London’s UN Ambassador Karen Pierce said. There is a “window of opportunity” to make progress on solving what the UN has called the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis, Pierce told the council.
“And what men have created, men can resolve,” she said.
The text will echo five calls made by UN humanitarian coordinator Mark Lowcock: to cease hostilities around aid operations and infrastructure, to facilitate the supply of food, to inject cash into the Yemeni economy, to increase funding to aid operations and to urge all warring parties to work with Griffiths.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) announced plans last week to stave off the looming famine by increasing its food distribution from 8 million to 14 million people.
Alongside the ongoing conflict in Yemen, civilians are suffering from a collapse of the currency, skyrocketing food prices and the loss of their livelihoods, WFP head David Beasley said on Friday.
Beasley warned that the nosediving economy posed just as much of a threat as the ongoing war.
Famine could hit Yemen within six months if conditions remain as they are now, with millions of people “marching towards the brink of starvation,” he said.
“What the war has done in a few years, the collapse of the economy will do in a few months,” Beasley said.
In the last three months, some 3.6 million people have gone from being food secure to food insecure, and the Yemeni rial currency depreciated by 45 per cent, according to the WFP.
Beasley and relief chief Lowcock touted a twin-track approach combining humanitarian aid with cash infusions of $200 million per month to boost the economy.
A $200-million deposit from Saudi Arabia to Yemen’s Central Bank in October has helped to bring down the exchange rate of the Yemeni currency, Lowcock told the council. — DPA
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