A UN donor conference for people affected by war in Yemen – which has been labelled as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” – has received pledges of more than $2bn (£1.4bn), close to half of which is promised by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two key protagonists in the conflict.

Despite falling well short of the almost $3bn being called for by the meeting in Geneva, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, hailed the donor conference a “remarkable success”.

The conference came just a day after an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on the port city of Hodeidah killed a number of children, in what the UN children’s fund, Unicef, called “one of the deadliest attacks” on minors in the country for years.

“The United Nations has verified the killing of several children in an attack … in the coastal city of Hodeidah in western Yemen,” Unicef said in a statement on 2 April.

“Many children are reported missing as the injured and killed are still being pulled out from the rubble,” it added, amid reports that seven children had been killed.

Guterres told reporters that in addition to the $2bn already committed, multiple countries had promised more donations in the coming months, leaving him “optimistic that we will be able to reach the level that corresponds to the needs”.

Asked if he saw a contradiction in the Saudi stance towards Yemen, Guterres said a country’s humanitarian commitments and military actions should be kept separate.

“We all know that there is a war. We all know who the parties [are] to the war but the two things need to be seen separately,” the UN chief told reporters.

“Independent of the fact that there is a war, there are humanitarian obligations that are assumed by countries,” he said.

“The countries that are also party to the conflict were party to these international efforts to support the people of Yemen.”

Last year’s Yemen appeal for $2.5bn was 73% funded, but the needs have intensified in a country battered since 2015 by a Saudi-led military offensive aimed at repelling Iran-backed Houthi rebels who control the capital.

The UN has said that three-quarters of Yemen’s population – about 22 million people – need some form of aid.

Saudi Arabia and its allies have repeatedly been accused of hitting civilians targets, including hospitals and markets, in their three-year campaign against the Houthis.

Guterres underscored that the only way to ensure that Yemen donor conferences do not continue year after year is for the sides to negotiate a peace deal.

“There was never a humanitarian solution for any humanitarian crisis,” he said. “The solution has always been political.”

The UN’s Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, has recently visited Riyadh and Sana’a in hopes of revitalising sputtering peace talks.

“I believe there is an opportunity and that opportunity must be seized,” Guterres said, explaining that Griffiths was “encouraged” by his trip and sees a window for further talks.

According to the UN, 8.4 million people are on the verge of famine in Yemen, where food imports are essential to sustain the population.

The Saudi-led coalition shut down the country’s land, sea and air borders last year in response to a missile attack by the Houthis that was intercepted near Riyadh.

While the coalition has eased the blockade, restrictions on deliveries persist.

“Humanitarians must be able to reach the people who need help the most, without conditions,” Guterres said.

“All ports must remain open to humanitarian and commercial cargo, the medicines, food and the fuel needed to deliver them,” he added, emphasising the need for unrestricted access to the country as well as within it. </s> Almost half the $2bn promised by nations at Geneva fundraising event is from two key protagonists in the conflict

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This article is more than 1 year old

A UN donor conference for people affected by war in Yemen – which has been labelled as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” – has received pledges of more than $2bn (£1.4bn), close to half of which is promised by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two key protagonists in the conflict.

Despite falling well short of the almost $3bn being called for by the meeting in Geneva, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, hailed the donor conference a “remarkable success”.

The conference came just a day after an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on the port city of Hodeidah killed a number of children, in what the UN children’s fund, Unicef, called “one of the deadliest attacks” on minors in the country for years.

“The United Nations has verified the killing of several children in an attack … in the coastal city of Hodeidah in western Yemen,” Unicef said in a statement on 2 April.

“Many children are reported missing as the injured and killed are still being pulled out from the rubble,” it added, amid reports that seven children had been killed.

Guterres told reporters that in addition to the $2bn already committed, multiple countries had promised more donations in the coming months, leaving him “optimistic that we will be able to reach the level that corresponds to the needs”.

Asked if he saw a contradiction in the Saudi stance towards Yemen, Guterres said a country’s humanitarian commitments and military actions should be kept separate.

“We all know that there is a war. We all know who the parties [are] to the war but the two things need to be seen separately,” the UN chief told reporters.

“Independent of the fact that there is a war, there are humanitarian obligations that are assumed by countries,” he said.

“The countries that are also party to the conflict were party to these international efforts to support the people of Yemen.”

Last year’s Yemen appeal for $2.5bn was 73% funded, but the needs have intensified in a country battered since 2015 by a Saudi-led military offensive aimed at repelling Iran-backed Houthi rebels who control the capital.

The UN has said that three-quarters of Yemen’s population – about 22 million people – need some form of aid.

Saudi Arabia and its allies have repeatedly been accused of hitting civilians targets, including hospitals and markets, in their three-year campaign against the Houthis.

Guterres underscored that the only way to ensure that Yemen donor conferences do not continue year after year is for the sides to negotiate a peace deal.

“There was never a humanitarian solution for any humanitarian crisis,” he said. “The solution has always been political.”

The UN’s Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, has recently visited Riyadh and Sana’a in hopes of revitalising sputtering peace talks.

'A cynical PR exercise': critics round on $3.5bn plan to allay Yemen suffering Read more

“I believe there is an opportunity and that opportunity must be seized,” Guterres said, explaining that Griffiths was “encouraged” by his trip and sees a window for further talks.

According to the UN, 8.4 million people are on the verge of famine in Yemen, where food imports are essential to sustain the population.

The Saudi-led coalition shut down the country’s land, sea and air borders last year in response to a missile attack by the Houthis that was intercepted near Riyadh.

While the coalition has eased the blockade, restrictions on deliveries persist.

“Humanitarians must be able to reach the people who need help the most, without conditions,” Guterres said.

“All ports must remain open to humanitarian and commercial cargo, the medicines, food and the fuel needed to deliver them,” he added, emphasising the need for unrestricted access to the country as well as within it. </s> A ship unloads a cargo of wheat at the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Yemen, April 1. The port, controlled by Shiite Houthi rebels, is key to feeding the capital, Sanaa, and Houthi regions. Some 17.8 million Yemenis are considered 'food insecure.'

—By the third anniversary of Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen last week, the coalition it leads – backed by the United States and Britain – had carried out 16,749 airstrikes against one of the poorest nations on earth. The United Nations blames coalition bombs for causing two-thirds of the more than 10,000 deaths in the conflict.

Shiite Houthi rebels marked the three-year anniversary of a war the UN blames for creating the "worst man-made humanitarian crisis in the world” by launching seven missiles deep into Saudi territory. Three fell on the capital Riyadh, killing one civilian, in the most extensive counter-strike of its kind.

But two days later, while Yemenis braced for a military response, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave a strong indication that the kingdom has also begun to focus on humanitarian needs in the war, which has created widespread hunger and a raging cholera epidemic.

The crown prince presented $930 million from Saudi Arabia and its chief coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to UN Secretary-General António Guterres in New York – a sum that meets nearly one-third of a $2.96 billion UN appeal for 2018.

That philanthropic largess will be welcomed tomorrow in Geneva, where the UN is convening a high-level pledging conference for Yemen. The cash is part of a $1.5 billion package announced by Saudi Arabia in late January, which is meant to include the expansion of Yemen’s port capacity and opening of 17 “safe passage corridors” for aid supplies, mostly in non-Houthi areas.

But Yemenis affected by the war and analysts alike say the Saudi donation aims more at repairing the kingdom’s own damaged reputation than at ending a war where it plays the decisive role. Indeed, the Saudis have also hired American and British firms to wage a concerted public relations campaign.

“The money the Saudis are giving is like make-up on its face,” says Abdulrashid Al-Faqih, executive director of the Mwatana Organization for Human Rights in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which has been under Houthi control since 2015.

“All the warring parties are responsible for this suffering, but first is the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition,” says Mr. Al-Faqih. “What would be better than this [money] would be if Saudi Arabia stopped the war in Yemen. It’s not enough for Yemen to receive humanitarian aid as long as the war continues.”

April Longley Alley, project director for the Arabian Peninsula for the International Crisis Group (ICG), articulates only a slightly more positive view of the Saudi initiative, though she reaches a similar conclusion.

“Over the last several months, it’s very clear the Saudis are taking the reputational damage seriously, and they are mobilizing resources to address it,” she says. “This is especially true around their humanitarian plan for Yemen that they just announced.

“In some respects, it’s very good, right? They are now focusing on the humanitarian crisis…. The UN has a humanitarian plan. It needs to be funded. That’s a very positive development,” says Ms. Alley, speaking from Dubai after visiting Yemen’s southern, coalition-controlled port city of Aden.

“But the larger picture has to be that humanitarian aid is a Band-Aid, and the reason we need that humanitarian aid is because of the conflict,” she says. “So as long as the conflict continues, it’s just going to create more of a need.”

The Saudi-led military intervention was initially meant to last just three months, to reverse a Houthi takeover of Yemen and restore the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

But as “Operation Decisive Storm” dragged on it was renamed “Operation Restoring Hope.” Mr. Hadi is still the nominal president, but rules from exile in Riyadh, and steady coalition bombing has devastated civilian infrastructure, from hospitals and factories to bridges – and led to war crimes charges.

A strict air, land and sea blockade – which Saudi Arabia promised to ease last November, with little follow-through so far – has meant that critical food and goods are too expensive for most. The UN says a “record” 22.2 million Yemenis, some 75 percent of the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2018, 3.4 million more people than last year.

Marie-Christine Heinze, a Yemen expert and president of the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO), a think tank in Bonn, Germany, argues that despite the Saudi humanitarian plan, the kingdom is not likely to scale down its military campaign.

“They continue the blockade, they continue to bombard civilian infrastructure, all of which continues to impact the humanitarian situation on the ground.... I don’t see this as a change,” says Ms. Heinze.

More broadly, the scale of bombing has “traumatized a whole population,” especially a generation of children, she says.

“Even if the war came to an end tomorrow, we would have to deal with the consequences of this for decades,” says Heinze. “You also have the conflict on the local level, the sectarian undertones, the hatred, the propaganda that is now not only dividing regions, north and south, but dividing governorates, villages, whole communities, dividing families – that’s going through the social texture in a way that [can’t] be easily mended.”

More than 79 percent of children experienced “severe symptoms” of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as being “unable to cry or unable to feel happy,” according to a CARPO survey of more than 900 Yemeni children after the first year of the Saudi intervention, during which the coalition bombed Sanaa several times a day.

By comparison only children in northern Iraq, in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds in 1988, registered similar levels of PTSD, according to this study. Today that impact would be greater, since Yemen’s children have been subject to two more years of conflict.

Yet the coalition air war – supported by American and British intelligence and advisers, and critically by US aircraft mid-air refueling capacity – is just one factor in Yemen’s suffering.

“Yemen is one of the most food insecure countries in the world,” where vulnerable populations in one out of three districts “are facing heightened risk of famine and require integrated response efforts to avert a looming catastrophe,” the UN states in its current appeal.

The conflict “exacerbated the poverty and vulnerabilities that were entrenched in Yemen before 2015,” says the UN. The result today is that 17.8 million Yemeni are “food insecure,” with 8.4 million of those “severely food insecure and at the risk of starvation.”

Such figures, and the widespread perception that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the bulk of Yemen’s civilian agony with little military result, has stung in Riyadh. Crown Prince Mohammed, 32, is the Saudi defense minister and architect of the war. He is nearing the end of a three-week visit to the US, where he met President Trump, lobbied for support for his shock-therapy reform program at home, and defended the Yemen war.

He told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the Houthis are “using the humanitarian situation to their advantage in order to draw sympathy,” and charged that the Houthis “block humanitarian aid in order to create famine and a humanitarian crisis.”

Early in the prince’s visit, the Senate narrowly defeated a bipartisan bill to end US refueling of coalition jets and intelligence support. Defense Secretary James Mattis argued that both the refueling and US advice on how to target were aimed a “reducing the risk of civilian casualties” by preventing “rash or hasty” decision by pilots running low on fuel during bombing runs.

It’s not clear how the announced Saudi plan will mesh with the multibillion dollar UN aid strategy.

Those Saudi steps are “very problematic” because they are not yet defined, says the ICG’s Alley. In the case of the ports they appear to be a bid to shift away from reliance on the crucial, Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah, which feeds the capital and Houthi regions.

“Three years in, there is no longer a Yemeni state, per se. There is no longer one country, [it] has fragmented along historical divides, and you have various power centers,” she says. “This is a largely stalemated, grinding war of attrition on many of these fronts…. It’s a multi-layered conflict, even inside Yemen.”

Saudi Arabia has addressed criticism of the war in other ways. A reporter for The Wall Street Journal was allowed rare access last month to the command center in Riyadh, for example, from which Yemen military operations are conducted.

Saudi officers spoke of trying to minimize civilian casualties in its mostly combat missions over Yemen.

“We’ll watch for hours, days sometimes, and not strike to protect civilians,” Maj. Gen. Abdullah al-Ghamdi was quoted as saying, while watching a live feed from a drone over Yemen that he said showed a group of fighters hiding in a compound.

The Houthi missile strike was a “message” to Saudi Arabia on the war anniversary, Alley says.

“The perception from their side is that, until Saudi Arabia feels pain from its side domestically, they are not going to be serious about negotiations,” she says. “That’s the Houthi perspective.”

For human rights activist Al-Faqih, in Sanaa, the deaths of civilians on any side is condemned. But the Houthi’s seven-missile strike a week ago pales in comparison to the coalition’s near-17,000 airstrikes – a figure from the Yemen Data Project.

“The airstrikes were almost all focused on destroying the interests of people, like attacking factories, the markets,” says Al-Faqih. “The military campaign conducted by the coalition is against the people, it’s not really against Houthis – it’s against Yemenis.”

“We do see the suffering every day on the streets and even on the faces of the Yemeni people,” he says.

“What could be worse than the current situation?” he asks. “All forms of normal life have been fading. It’s started to disappear.” </s> HAMBURG (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday promised $639 million in aid to feed people left starving because of drought and conflict in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.

Trump's pledge came during a working session of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, providing a "godsend" to the United Nations' World Food Programme, the group's executive director, David Beasley, told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

"We're facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two," said Beasley, a Republican and former South Carolina governor who was nominated by Trump to head the U.N. agency fighting hunger worldwide.

The new funding brings to over $1.8 billion aid promised by the United States for fiscal year 2017 for the crises in the four countries, where the United Nations has estimated more than 30 million people need urgent food assistance.

"With this new assistance, the United States is providing additional emergency food and nutrition assistance, life-saving medical care, improved sanitation, emergency shelter and protection for those who have been affected by conflict," USAID said in a statement.

Rob Jenkins, acting head of the USAID's bureau of democracy, conflict and humanitarian assistance, said of the funding, over $191 million would go to Yemen, $199 million to South Sudan, $121 million to Nigeria and almost $126 million for Somalia.

Conflict in all four countries had made it difficult to reach some communities in need of food, he noted.

"We're in a dire situation right now," said Jenkins, adding that USAID was also concerned with the situation in southern Ethiopia.

"The situation in southern Ethiopia fortunately does not rise to the dire situation of the other four, but the situation is deteriorating and might very well be catastrophic without additional interventions," he said, adding that Washington had already provided some $252 million this year to Ethiopia, "but the needs continue to grow."

Beasley said the U.S. funding was about a third of what the WFP estimated was required this year to deal with urgent food needs in the four countries in crisis as well as in other areas.

The WFP estimates that 109 million people around the world will need food assistance this year, up from 80 million last year, with 10 of the 13 worst-affected zones stemming from wars and "man-made" crises, Beasley said.

"We estimated that if we didn't receive the funding we needed immediately that 400,000 to 600,000 children would be dying in the next four months," he said.

Trump's announcement came after his administration proposed sharp cuts in funding for the U.S. State Department and other humanitarian missions as part of his "America First" policy.

Beasley said the agency had worked hard with the White House and the U.S. government to secure the funding, but Trump would insist that other countries contributed more as well.

A WFP spokesman said Germany recently pledged an additional 200 million euros for food relief. </s> GENEVA, April 3 (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring sides in Yemen on Tuesday to reach a political settlement to end a four-year-old conflict that has left 22 million people in urgent need of aid.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi echoed the call for a return to the negotiating table and said that his internationally-recognised government was working to open ports and airports to humanitarian aid.

The U.N. conference, which is seeking pledges towards a $3 billion funding appeal to address the world's worst humanitarian crisis, takes place a day after an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen killed 12 civilians in the coastal city of Hodeidah and the Houthi rebels later targeted Saudi Arabia's southern border area with a missile.

"A negotiated political settlement through inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue is the only solution. I urge all parties to engage with my new Special Envoy, Martin Griffiths, without delay," Guterres told the one-day conference.

"All ports must remain open to humanitarian and commercial cargo, the medicines, food and the fuel needed to deliver them. Sanaa airport is also a lifeline that must be kept open," he said.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country - already the poorest on the Arabian Peninsula - to the verge of famine. Hodeidah is Yemen's biggest port where most of the humanitarian aid enters for millions of hungry civilians but the government accuses Houthis who control the port of smuggling weapons through it.

Mekhlafi said: "We need to find the ideal solution which is a return to the talks table, to put an end the war, to return to a sustainable system supported by the people of Yemen, including the putschist parties and those supported by the international community."

The country's unity and territorial integrity must be preserved, he added.

When the Houthis fired missiles at Riyadh last November, the Western-backed coalition responded by shutting Yemen´s airports and ports. The United Nations said that blockade raised the danger of mass starvation and it was partially lifted.

"It is a war that should end, so we need a ceasefire, we need peace talks, we need an end to the embargo on many of Yemen's ports," Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters.

"But we also ask Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran - who are supporting opposing sides - and for that matter, the United Kingdom, the United States, who are earning enormous sums of money on arms sales to this conflict to push the parties to the table."

Senior aid officials from Britain and the United States also called for a political solution to the conflict. </s> UNITED STATES: The United Nations is warning that the world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II, with more than 20 million people facing starvation and famine in four countries.

The world body's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien called Friday for an urgent mobilisation of funds - US$4.4 billion by July - for northeastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen to "avert a catastrophe."

"Otherwise, many people will predictably die from hunger, livelihoods will be lost and political gains that have been hardwon over the last few years will be reversed," O'Brien said in his stark warning to the UN Security Council.

"Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease. Children stunted and out of school. Livelihoods, futures and hope will be lost."

He called war-wracked Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world," with two thirds of the population, or 18.8 million people - three million more than in January - in need of assistance and more than seven million with no regular access to food.

The conflict in Yemen has left more than 7,400 people dead and 40,000 wounded since an Arab-state coalition intervened on the government's side against rebels in March 2015, according to UN figures.

In just the past two months alone, more than 48,000 people have fled fighting in the Arab world's poorest country, according to O'Brien, as it grapples with a proxy war fought by archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

During recent meetings, O'Brien said senior leaders in both parties agreed to provide continuous humanitarian access and respect international humanitarian law.

He noted that 4.9 million people received food assistance last month alone.

"Yet all parties to the conflict are arbitrarily denying sustained humanitarian access and politicise aid," he added.

"Already, the humanitarian suffering that we see in Yemen today is caused by the parties and proxies and if they don't change their behavior now, they must be held accountable for the inevitable famine, unnecessary deaths and associated amplification in suffering that will follow."

He noted that despite assurances from all parties that he would obtain safe passage to the flashpoint city of Taiz, he was in fact denied access and came under gunfire after retreating to a short distance away.

A total of US $2.1 billion is needed to reach 12 million people with life-saving assistance and protection in Yemen this year, according to O'Brien, who noted that just six per cent of those funds have been received so far.

He announced that a ministerial-level pledging event for Yemen will take place in Geneva on April 25, to be chaired by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

During his visit last week to South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, O'Brien said he found a situation that is "worse than it has ever been."

"The famine in South Sudan is man-made," he added.

"Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine, as are those not intervening to make the violence stop."

He said more than 7.5 million people need assistance, an increase of 1.4 million from last year. And some 3.4 million people are displaced, including nearly 200,000 who have fled South Sudan since January alone.

More than half the population of Somalia, 6.2 million people, need humanitarian assistance and protection, including 2.9 million at risk of famine.

Nearly one million children under the age of five will be "acutely malnourished" this year, according to the humanitarian chief, who also visited the country.

"What I saw and heard during my visit to Somalia was distressing - women and children walk for weeks in search of food and water," O'Brien said.

"They have lost their livestock, water sources have dried up and they have nothing left to survive on. With everything lost, women, boys, girls and men now move to urban centres."

In northeastern Nigeria, O'Brien said 10.7 million people need humanitarian aid, including 7.1 million people who are "severely food insecure."

The humanitarian emergency afflicting the area was triggered by the Boko Haram insurgency, which erupted in Nigeria in 2009. Poor governance and climate change have also been powerful contributors to the crisis.

The conflict, which has left around 20,000 people dead and forced more than 2.6 million others to flee their homes, has aggravated an already difficult humanitarian situation in one of the poorest regions of the world. </s> When Global Affairs Canada announced another aid package to war-torn Yemen in January, it boasted that Ottawa had given a total of $65 million to help ease what the United Nations has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time.” What Justin Trudeau’s government did not mention in its news release is that since 2015, Canada has also approved more than $284 million in exports of Canadian weapons and military goods to the countries bombing Yemen. “It’s a bit like helping pay for somebody’s crutches after you’ve helped break their legs,” said Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, a research and advocacy organization that studies Canada’s arms trade. Jaramillo calls Canada’s position “blatantly contradictory,” saying the government can’t claim to be a champion of human rights while arming the world’s worst offenders. “The problem is Canada also wants the sweet multibillion-dollar deals, so it cuts corners on human rights.” The Canadian government is the seller in some of these transactions. In others, they broker and approve deals for Canadian companies. Government officials could not say whether weapons exported from Canada have been used in Yemen.

Cancelling these multibillion-dollar deals would mean losing jobs. A $14.8-billion sale of Canadian-made armoured combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia — negotiated by the Conservative government in 2014 but given final approval by the Liberals — will reportedly provide work for about 3,000 people for 14 years in southern Ontario, where manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems–Canada is a major employer. Canada’s arms trade in the Middle East goes beyond the Saudi deal. Since the beginning of the war in Yemen, which is now entering its fourth year, Canada has also made millions selling guided missiles to Bahrain, which has crushed political dissent at home while aiding Saudi efforts abroad, and has exported an assortment of weapons and military equipment to the United Arab Emirates, which human rights organizations have criticized for numerous abuses within its own borders and in Yemen. “Canada remains deeply concerned by the conflict in Yemen,” a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in a statement to the Star. He added the government pays “careful attention” to the potential for Canadian weapons to be used in the war, but he did not explain how or provide any specifics.

The Star calculated Canada’s arms exports since 2015 to all of the countries in the Saudi coalition involved in Yemen’s war, as disclosed in Global Affairs’ annual report on Canadian exports of military goods. The bulk of the trade is with Saudi Arabia, to which Canada sold more than $240 million worth of weapons and other military goods in 2015 and 2016 — mostly combat vehicles, but also guns, training gear, bombs, rockets or missiles, drones and unspecified chemical or biological agents, which could include riot control agents. “Canadians need to better understand the fact that we are an arms-trading nation,” said Alex Neve, Canada’s secretary general for Amnesty International. Yemen quietly slips away, much like its starving children Opinion | Burman: Instead of helping Yemen's kids, we bloody our hands The reports cover only exports in the first two years of the Saudi-led bombardment, because last year’s exports will not be disclosed until this summer. The numbers are also incomplete. They do not include Canadian weapons diverted to the Middle East through another country. The United States and United Kingdom are also arming Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, but they, and Canada, are increasingly isolated in their position. The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2016 calling on all member states to enforce an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia for its role in Yemen. The Netherlands was first to take up the call. Finland and Norway have since stopped selling weapons to the United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, Germany declared an end to arms sales to all parties involved in Yemen’s war. Trudeau’s government has suggested no such ban, despite expressing “deep concern” over reports of Saudi abuses. Ottawa’s official position is that it will stop the export of military goods if there is a “reasonable risk” of human rights abuses. What that has meant, in practice, is that even when a country has a demonstrably poor record on human rights, unless there is definitive evidence Canadian weapons were used to commit human rights abuses, Canada is open to their business. Neve questions why the government needs proof of a “smoking tank” before taking action. “People think Canada is only on the hook, Canada is only responsible, if something bad has happened,” he said. “Arms control is all about preventing it happening in the first place.”

The true tally of Canada’s arms sales to the Middle East is possibly much higher than the export statistics suggest. Canada does not disclose any sales to its largest buyer of military goods, the U.S., which account for at least half of Canada’s weapons exports. The U.S., in turn, sells nearly half of its weapons to countries in the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia. So it’s impossible to know how many Canadian weapons or weapon components, if any, the U.S. has sold or donated to the Saudi coalition. Meanwhile, an American army commander admitted last month to a U.S. Senate committee that they don’t know how their weapons are used in Yemen. Anthony Fenton, an academic who follows Canada’s arms exports to the Middle East, uses local reports and photos posted to social media to track the use of Canadian weapons in Yemen. Many of the images come from the military itself — what Fenton calls “Saudi selfies” — and appear to show Canadian equipment being used by the Saudis or Emirates on Yemen’s border or within its towns. Though they are difficult to verify, the sheer number of sightings posted by civilians or players on all sides of the conflict provide a damning body of evidence, according to Fenton. “There is not a shred of doubt Canadian equipment is being used in Yemen,” he said. “We track this on a daily basis and there hasn’t been a week since this war began that there hasn’t been some sighting of Canadian goods being used.” A Canadian manufacturer that wants to sell weapons to a foreign country other than the U.S. requires an export permit from Global Affairs Canada, which says it “strives to ensure” Canadian exports of weapons and other military goods “do not undermine peace, security or stability in any region of the world or within any country.” Government bureaucrats assess permits on a case-by-case basis and are supposed to block sales to countries whose governments have a “persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens, unless it can be demonstrated that there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population.” Freeland’s spokesperson said if the government had evidence a Canadian-exported weapon was being deployed other than for its “authorized end use,” Freeland would cancel future export permits associated with the sale. But how does Ottawa monitor weapons once they’re in the hands of another country? Global Affairs did not answer. Fenton said he didn’t think Canadian officials did “much of anything” to monitor Canadian weapons after they’re sold. “What could they do? They’d have to have personnel embedded with the military with a notepad. The point is they shouldn’t be sold in the first place,” he said.

Already the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen has seen its economy collapse under the Saudi coalition’s near-daily air raids, which have crippled the food supply and destroyed basic infrastructure. Starvation and disease are rampant, while hospitals have been targeted and most medical services are delivered by volunteers. Tawakkol Karman, like many Yemenis, feels abandoned by the rest of the world. Karman, the first Arab woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was once feted by the international community for her leadership during the Arab Spring protests, which forced out Yemen’s autocratic ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, after three decades in power. “If I’m angry about something, or sad about something, it’s about the silence of the international community and their complicity,” Karman said in a phone interview. “Canada is giving from its right hand the humanitarian aid, and from the other, missiles.” Yemen’s conflict is a domestic power struggle — between supporters of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s exiled government and the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group — though it has also turned into an ugly proxy war for the region’s superpowers, pitting the Iranian-backed rebels against the Saudi coalition. The United Nations and human rights groups have documented abuses and potential war crimes on both sides of the conflict, including the deliberate targeting of civilians. The UN has not updated its death toll since 2016, when it reported that 10,000 people had been killed in the war, more than half of them civilians. The World Health Organization declared Yemen’s cholera epidemic the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history. Saudi Arabia’s naval blockade has devastated the country, leading to the starvation of many, mostly children. “It’s a crisis, but it’s happening in slow motion,” said Stephen Anderson, Yemen’s country director for the United Nations World Food Programme. He has witnessed “horrifying” scenes of Yemeni children suffering from advanced malnutrition, reduced to skin and bones. “It’s worse almost to see their families who stand there helpless. They’re struggling to try to keep their dignity, to keep their culture. There’s such a sadness and a resignation because they’re powerless to stop the conflict.” The Canadian government has cancelled or reviewed some arms sales because of human rights concerns. Earlier this year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a human rights pariah, cancelled a $300-million deal to buy 16 Canadian helicopters after Ottawa announced it was reviewing the deal. Global Affairs itself cancelled two arms exports to Thailand in 2016 over human rights concerns, according to its annual report. Details of the cancelled deals were not disclosed. Arms exports to Saudi Arabia were temporarily put on hold for several months last year, following reports in the Globe and Mail about footage that appeared to show Canadian-made combat vehicles used by Saudi government forces to suppress civilian demonstrations. In February, Freeland said an internal investigation found “no conclusive evidence” that Canadian-made vehicles were used. The government has not disclosed the report. Another deal considered problematic by arms control experts is Canada’s $2.2-million sale of 27 Maverick air-to-surface missiles to Bahrain, completed in 2016. (Canada also sold $1.3 million worth of military software to Bahrain that same year, but it’s unclear if the sales are related.) Canada agreed to sell Bahrain the missiles, declared surplus by the Canadian military, in 2014 when Stephen Harper was prime minister. The war in Yemen had yet to begin, but Bahrain’s dismal human rights record at home — particularly in the years following the Arab Spring — was well documented by rights groups. The missiles weren’t shipped until 2016, when Trudeau’s government signed off on the export permit. By that point, Bahrain’s air force was heavily involved in the Saudi-led air raids in Yemen. Ken Epps, a longtime arms trade researcher for Project Ploughshares, said Canada’s existing export controls should have prevented the deal because of the “high risk” they could be used to commit human rights violations. But a Global Affairs spokesperson told the Star a risk assessment conducted prior to the sale and shipment of the missiles raised “no such concerns.” The spokesperson did not answer if the Canadian government knows whether or not the missiles have been used. Freeland’s spokesperson said Bahrain is an ally in fighting terrorism in the region: “Canada and Bahrain collaborate closely to stop terrorism and piracy in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.”

Sayed Ahmed AlWadaei, a human rights activist who was imprisoned and tortured by Bahraini authorities following the government’s crackdown during the Arab Spring, said there is no justification for selling weapons to Bahrain. “It sends the message that Canada is OK with human rights abuses,” said AlWadaei, who moved to the U.K. in 2012 and now works for the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy. He added that any country that sells arms to Bahrain is complicit in its abuses. “It’s a very simple equation: you either support a dictatorship with a terrible human rights record, or you stand up against them.” Bahrain’s U.S. Embassy, which is also responsible for Canada, did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story. Global Affairs Canada refused to disclose the criteria it used in its risk assessment of the Bahrain missile sale. Freeland has said Canada can “do better” with regard to how it controls arms exports. She introduced legislation last year to make Canada a party to the Arms Trade Treaty, a United Nations initiative to better regulate the international arms trade. Under the proposed legislation, the government would be legally obligated to block exports where there is a “substantial risk” they could be used to commit human rights violations. Currently the risk assessments are only a consideration. But Canada will continue to keep secret its trade to the U.S., and critics say that loophole means the government will continue to have virtually no control over where Canadian weapons end up. It’s also unclear how the new law, if passed, would change how Canada assesses risk. When asked, for instance, if Canada would have sold missiles to Bahrain if it had already been a party to the Arms Trade Treaty, Freeland’s spokesperson did not answer the question. </s> Sana’a, 21 April 2018 – The United Nations is deeply shocked by the killing of an aid worker from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which occurred today in Taizz Governorate.

“We condemn this terrible and unjustified shooting,” said Lise Grande, Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen.

“Humanitarians are working around-the-clock to provide food, medical care, shelter, water and survival items to millions of people who have been impacted by this devastating conflict,” said Ms. Grande. “We cannot do what we have to do if we are unsafe and fear for our lives.”

“Our deepest condolences go out to the family of our ICRC colleague and to everyone in ICRC,” said Ms. Grande.

“Parties to the conflict are obliged under international humanitarian law to do everything possible to protect civilians and ensure they have the assistance they need to survive. We cannot stress enough the obligation of the parties to protect the people who provide this aid.”

Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Twenty-two million people, 75 percent of the population, require some form of humanitarian assistance and protection. More than 190 partners are currently working across Yemen to provide life-saving aid. At a conference in Geneva on 3 April, forty countries pledged more than USD 2 billion to support humanitarian operations in Yemen. </s> March 31 (UPI) -- A fire on Saturday broke out in four World Food Program warehouses in the Hodeidah port of Yemen destroying a lot of the food and humanitarian supplies.

"The fire destroyed huge amounts of fuel and humanitarian aid and foodstuff," a WFP employee said in PressTV report, adding that an investigation would take place to determine the cause of the fire.

The four warehouses contained 50 tons of food, according to a BBC report, along with cooking fuel and mattresses for people displaced in the war in Yemen, which has killed about 10,000 people in thee years.

The conflict has raged on since March 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition launched a military operation to restore Yemen's internationally recognized government, and defeat the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The United States, Britain and France support the coalition of eight Arab countries.

Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the Arab world even before the conflict broke out, according to the WFP.

With millions of people starving and a cholera outbreak amidst the conflict, the United Nations has called Yemen the "world's largest humanitarian crisis."

Back in November, the Saudi-led coalition announced it would allow rebel-held ports in Hodeidah and Sanaa airport to accept humanitarian aid, following international outcry.

However, Paolo Cernuschi, country director for the International Rescue Committee in Yemen, said that the move to lift the blockade for humanitarian aid did not go far enough.

"Humanitarian aid alone cannot meet the needs of Yemenis who are unjustly bearing the brunt of this war," Cernuschi said.
At a United Nations donor conference nations pledge US$2 billion in aid for Yemen, with almost half coming from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.