Iran Press/ Europe: UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley delivered a speech during a UN Security Council consultation on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen held on Wednesday.
"We are on a countdown right now to a catastrophe in Yemen," he expressed.
He stressed that now, there’s a toxic combination taking place of surging violence, a deepening of the economic and currency collapse, and COVID-19 is ratcheting up the misery to a whole new level.
"So we have got to get the world to open its eyes, to realize what we’re truly seeing in the unfolding humanitarian disaster before it’s too late. If we choose to look away, there’s no doubt in my mind Yemen will be plunged into a devastating famine within a few short months," Beasley noted.
"The truth is... we have been here before, we were here just a few years ago. I briefed the Security Council on Yemen in 2018 and 2019 with Mark Lowcock. We did almost the same dog-and-pony show. We sounded the alarm then. In November 2018 I warned of the horrors that innocent civilians were forced to endure and today, quite frankly their suffering is even more pitiful than then and than ever," he pointed.
Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and the United States, began invading Yemen on March 26, 2015.
But over the past six years, with the exception of the UAE and the US, other Saudi allies have left the coalition, and Abu Dhabi has now grown from an old ally to a rival to Riyadh in southern Yemen.
Thousands of Yemenis have been killed since Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen, and according to the United Nations, famine in the country has become the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in the world.
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