AL-KUKALLA: Twenty-two humanitarian groups working in Yemen have urged the Iran-backed Houthis and the World Food Programme to resolve their assistance distribution dispute as soon as possible to prevent widespread starvation.
The WFP suspended the distribution of humanitarian aid in areas under Houthi control last week, citing funding shortages and a dispute with the Houthis as the reasons.
The Houthis denied a UN proposal to reduce the number of recipients of aid from 9.5 million to 6.5 million, the organization said, following nearly a year of negotiations.
The 22 international organizations, which included Islamic Relief, OXFAM, Save the Children, Qatar Charity, and others, expressed “grave” concern about the impact of the food delivery suspension on Yemen’s already dire humanitarian situation in the Houthi-controlled areas.
“After years of conflict and economic decline, food aid is a lifeline for millions of Yemenis and suspending it as the country works toward peace is a catastrophic scenario. We understand the fears and concerns of the affected Yemeni people, and we stand in solidarity with them,” the organizations said in their joint appeal.
To avert an impending famine in war-torn Yemen, the organizations proposed that the WFP and the Houthis reach an agreement that would allow humanitarian aid delivery to resume in Sanaa and other Houthi-controlled districts and that international donors quickly mobilize additional funding to reduce the impact of the aid suspension, focusing on food, health, and cash aid.
“The sooner an agreement is reached, the more likelihood of averting the risk of famine conditions returning to Yemen,” the statement continued.
Yemen’s war, which began in late 2014 after the Houthis seized power militarily, has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Yemenis and has triggered what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The WFP dispute with the Houthis is the latest in a series of incidents in which the militia has harassed humanitarian workers and obstructed the delivery of assistance in Yemen.
In their latest report on Yemen, the UN Panel of Experts said that life-saving humanitarian goods and medicine have expired before reaching their intended recipients due to the Houthis’ obstruction of aid delivery.
The panel also accused the Houthis of diverting humanitarian funding to their backers and selling aid items in detention centers, in addition to removing the names of those who oppose their policies from the list of aid recipients.

OSLO: The teenage children of jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi fear they will never meet their mother again, but said they were proud of her struggle for women’s rights as they prepared to accept the award on her behalf on Sunday.
Mohammadi, 51, who is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on charges including spreading propaganda, won the award on Oct. 6 in a rebuke to Tehran’s theocratic leaders, prompting the Islamic Republic’s condemnation.
Her twin 17-year-old children, Ali and Kiana Rahman, who live in exile in Paris, are due to accept the award at Oslo’s City Hall and give the Nobel Peace Prize lecture on her behalf.
In a letter smuggled out of prison and published by Swedish broadcaster SVT this week, Mohammadi said she would continue to fight for human rights even if it led to her death. But she said she missed her children the most.
Kiana Rahman, who last saw her mother eight years ago, said: “When it comes to seeing her again, personally I am very pessimistic.”
“Maybe I’ll see her in 30 or 40 years, but I think I won’t see her again,” she told a press conference via a translator. “But that doesn’t matter because my mother will always live on in my heart and with my family.”
Mohammadi was awarded the Peace Prize just over a year after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iranian morality police after being detained for allegedly violating the rules of wearing a hijab, an Islamic head scarf.
Amini’s death provoked months of nationwide protests that posed the biggest challenge to Shiite clerical rule in years, and was met with a deadly security crackdown costing several hundred lives.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award for Mohammadi also recognized hundreds of thousands who had demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies discriminating and oppressing women.
Iran has called the protests Western-led subversion, accusing the Nobel committee of meddling and politicizing human rights.
Mohammadi’s son Ali said he had accepted from early childhood that the family would live apart, but said he would stay optimistic he might see her again.
“If we don’t see her again we will always be proud of her and go on with our struggle,” he said.
Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani said the award would give her a larger voice even if her own conditions were likely to become more difficult.
“It’s a political prize and therefore there will be more pressure on Narges, but at the same time it is going to create a space for echoing the voice of the people” said Rahmani, who will also attend Sunday’s ceremony.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the prize, which today is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or around $1 million, and the fifth person to win it while in detention.
It is awarded on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.