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UN scales up aid in anticipation of humanitarian pause in Yemen

Xinhua, May 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

UN relief wing and UN partners are scaling up assistance in anticipation of an announced five-day humanitarian pause in Yemen, said a UN spokesman at a daily briefing on Tuesday here.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, Johannes van der Klaauw, who went to the Yemeni capital of Sanaa Tuesday, and other relief officers are preparing with UN partners to scale up even further in anticipation of the declared humanitarian pause that is due to take place Tuesday, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the Special Envoy for Yemen, has also arrived in Sanaa. He hopes to meet with various Yemeni parties, in particular Houthi representatives, said Dujarric.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that a shipment of aid has arrived by sea in the Yemen port of Hodeida, carrying blankets, sleeping mats and kitchen utensils for 60,000 people.

The UNHCR is preparing for a possible huge airlift of humanitarian aid into Sanaa to take place over the next days if the pause comes into effect and holds.

The plan would involve an airlift from Dubai that would bring 300 tonnes of sleeping mats, blankets, kitchen sets and plastic sheeting, part of a larger aid mobilization under way for a quarter of a million people, said Dujarric.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is ready to provide emergency food rations to more than 750,000 people in conflict-hit areas of Yemen. The WFP will also pre-position specialized products to fight malnutrition among children.

A WFP-chartered vessel arrived in Hodeida on Saturday with some 300,000 liters of fuel and supplies for other humanitarian organizations. Another vessel is in international waters, ready to dock, with an additional 120,000 liters of fuel. But together this is only 15 percent of the monthly fuel requirement for all humanitarian operations, said Dujarric.

The WFP has reached more than 1 million people in Yemen in the past month. The conflict has increased the number of hungry people and it is now estimated that 12 million people in Yemen are struggling to find their next meal, said Dujarric.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is working with all relevant partners, both internal and external, and they will be setting up a coordination and aid distribution center out of Djibouti, said Dujarric.

Yemen has been mired in political gridlock since 2011 when mass protests forced former President Ali Abdullash Saleh to step down. The three-year reconciliation talks failed to resolve the crisis but create huge power vacuum as competing forces fight for control of the country.

Airstrikes, shelling and clashes reportedly continued in Saada Governorate over the past 24 hours, with 13 casualties reported. It has not been possible to verify the information on displacement and damages as telecommunications have been cut off, according to Dujarric. Endite