While the rest of the world is focused on COVID-19, the vaccine, and US politics, Yemenis are dying because of a lack of food in the country. Famine in Yemen isn’t new — two years ago, widespread famine in Yemen was prevented through donation from the entire world. However, because of coronavirus and the reality TV show that is US politics, Yemen's new round of famine isn’t being brought in front of people eyes. While media attention may not seem like a big deal, the media is a big reason Yemen avoided complete famine two years ago — the media pushed the horrifying pictures of starving children in front of people and governments, which forced them to donate (if governments did not participate in the aid programs they would look extremely bad). However, this year, Yemen has received only half what it needed — about 1.5 billion dollars— when it received about 3 billion last year.
The UN describes Yemen as the single biggest humanitarian crisis in the world — over 80% of the population is in need of help as a result of the ongoing civil war, yet the majority of the world chooses to look away because it hurts to look at. To understand the true horrors of famine, one should understand what a lack of food does to the human body: “vital organs start to wither and ‘the body starts to devour its own muscles, including the heart.’” 30 million people are at risk of this torturous future. More than half are children. Over 85,000 children under the age of 5 have already died.
Other than the ethical problem of leaving people to starve, this is important to the US because some of the countries that are involved in the blockade of goods into Yemen are U.S. allies. Should the U.S intervene to stop this humanitarian crisis or maintain relations with its allies in the middle east? It gets even messier when you factor in that these same countries are involved in other problems in the middle east (such as Al-Queda, etc), but in those cases, these countries are on the ethically “correct” side. Clearly, there isn't a perfect solution. But anything is better than turning a blind eye to human lives.
Donate at https://www.unicefusa.org/?form=HelpYemenChildren
11 comments:
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I believe that the situation in Yemen is extremely important to think about. Personally, I think the best approach would to be having talks with middle eastern leaders on what to do. Because of the mass death of innocent children, middle eastern countries may be more inclined to allow for U.S. access to Yemen in order to aid in preventing famine. At the same time, we have to question ourselves. Especially with the current administration, a coronavirus outbreak could be transmitted from the U.S. to already fragile secluded Yemen communities. Is it worth taking that risk? Also, if middle eastern countries decide not to agree with the U.S. decision to aid Yemen, should we still go? Especially now, war is extremely brutal, and a possible escalation in the middle east could be devastating to many families, both at home and abroad. If anything, Yemen could be forgotten about more during the war as the concentration focuses on our soldiers and allies. If it comes down to war, I think the U.S. will have to back down and accept the fact that children are going to die because of the famine. It is a horrible thing to say, but at that point our hands would essentially be tied, and that option would be the "lesser of two evils."
The Yemen famine crisis is no doubt an important issue that we should all remember to fight for and it is really unfortunate that this year, the amount of contributions has declined significantly. While I do think that the US should pay more attention to this matter, I also think that given the current political situation and the coronavirus, the US does not have the bandwidth to send its resources to help the communities in Yemen, especially since the US is already having a very difficult time getting the coronavirus under control and getting our economy back to normal. It would obviously be best if other nations could also help fight this humanitarian crisis, but because most countries would often like to do things that would benefit their own country, would help their own country maintain power, and serve their country first, it would seem that the Yemen crisis will not be solved soon, and the US would probably choose to maintain its alliances in the middle east
I feel terrible that Yemen did not receive close to the amount of donations needed to beat famine this year. Unfortunately, the U.S. and many other countries have had their hands tied with the Covid-19 virus and the election that people have not forgotten, but pushed back the Yemen hunger crisis in their minds. I wish that the U.S. and other countries could do more to aid Yemen during these troubling times but it is hard to say how involved the U.S. should be. While of course everyone wants to help, having a conference about the blockage with leaders in the Middle East could negatively escalate and the U.S. would need more support to get anything done. I do think that the media needs to cover it more but we have been jam packed with things recently and there has been no pause to think about other countries besides our own, sadly enough. Hopefully Yemen will get more donations soon but it is hard to say.
It's astounding how the world can watch and turn a blind eye to the suffering abroad. We need to mobilize to come up with long term solutions and implement them immediately. We could plant public farms for fresh food and help low income Yemenis in starting micro businesses so they can feed their families. Mismanagement of the money could also be exacerbating the problem, but is important to also address the immediate need for food. In America, shelves are stocked with food that may never be eaten, so the fact that million are starving overseas is extremely upsetting. With people going broke due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I understand why they can not donate to the cause. But what about the people with billions of dollars that are profiting off of the pandemic(ahem Jeff Bezos)? What about the Middle Eastern leaders that shove money in their pockets while leaving their constituents and people in the surrounding areas to fend for themselves? There needs to be more pressure on them rather than ordinary people.
It's quite ironic how a country that isn't capable of controlling a virus given 10 months is capable of helping other countries from massive deaths/starvations. Responding to Anoush, it's much more complicated, I feel, than planting farms and creating micro-businesses. The US has already donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Yemen. As for Jeff Bezos, he isn't responsible for Yemen's problems. It'd be great if he could even contribute to donations, but whenever he does donate, people seem to get aggravated because of the amount compared to his "total net-worth". Anyways, at the moment, the risk is still too high. Even if the vaccine is out, the risk is high as it needs to be concentrated on Americans. For now, I think it's best to create plans, but not actually carry them out.
The fact that this situation has not been popular in American news just shows how biased media is. This is a terrible event that clearly should be reported on more, and theoretically, the US should defiantly be involved in trying to help the people in Yemen. However there could be some factors that make that difficult. With the pandemic getting worse and worse in America, it could make it difficult to deal with both at the same time. Instead of simply forcing our help onto them, it would be much better to have talks with the leaders which most likely, they would be more than happy to accept our help.
It seems like most people in the comments section aside from Ju and Peter actually understand the situation. This is a direct conflict between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Yemen was already poor before the famine, but once Saudi Arabia started bombing attacks on Yemen farms and other vital locations, Yemen officially went into famine. Donations are not really effective because Saudi Arabia has made efforts to obstruct humanitarian aid from reaching Yemen. Even if we tried to help Yemen build farms or whatnot like Anoush suggests, if the patterns continue than it will just become another bombing site for Saudi Arabia. In addition, most of Yemen's food is important, and it is that source of food that Saudi Arabia has also blocked. The tricky part of the situation is because the US has sold arms to Saudi Arabia to help combat against Iran, but they are also using these arms to create this humanitarian crisis. The solution defiantly must come from peace between the Yemenis and Saudi's.
This is an extremely complicated event. Considering how we are in a pandemic, our country has one of the highest infection rates, our economy is hurting, and our election is disputed with Trump refusing to concede might be enough to to understand why we aren’t intervening in the conflict. However, the true problem is that the civil war in Yemen is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran/Al Quadea in Iraq. Clearly, we are on the side of Saudi Arabia, but this also means that Saudi Arabia will continue bombing Yemen in order to protect itself from total annihilation by Iran/Al Quadea. Therefore, involving ourselves militarily significantly more than our operations against Al Quadea would most definitely be the wrong option, as Peter said. There are more parties in this than Yemeni forces and starving people. It appears that the right option is providing humanitarian aid all the while striving for diplomatic talks and perhaps a cease fire. This appears to have been effective in Vietnam and Korea, but hopefully we won’t have to involve ourselves in the Yemen war to the extent of the Vietnam and Korea wars. However, diplomacy in the Middle East is notoriously difficult, so I’m doubtful that any change will occur soon almost no matter what we do. Radical governments and organizations in Iran/Iraq block that possibility.
The situation in Yemen is very heartbreaking and it is an issue that needs to be taken care of. However, Covid-19 is the biggest concern right now in almost every country, and I think countries are more determined to help their citizens first, rather than support other countries like Yemen. While I’m sure many countries want to help solve the crisis in Yemen, it is very hard to solve and it is not their first priority. I think the U.S. should help Yemen, but the U.S. has been greatly affected by Covid-19. Millions of people have lost their jobs and the economy is in recession. I do not know how to solve Yemen’s situation, but as long as people are aware of the problem and spread the word about the millions of people suffering in Yemen, then hopefully people will be willing to donate to this cause.
The current situation in Yemen is very saddening and there should be more awareness about this issue. This crisis has been a constant issue and with a majority of the public's focus on the coronavirus pandemic, it's quite easy to forget about the famine. But even though there is a more recent crisis, it should not pause the aid to other issues, especially a famine labelled the "single biggest humanitarian crisis in the world." Although I would like to support the US directly aiding the Yemenis, with the recent spike in COVID cases and still fairly loosely enforced lockdown regulations, the US directly aiding Yemen could result in possibly spreading the virus to Yemen, which would be even more catastrophic. With constant was in the Middle East, and many Houthi rebels confiscating the food supplies sent by the UN, many of the shipments of food and efforts to stop this famine is greatly being hindered. Sadly, the only possible solutions in stopping the confiscation of food and the air strikes from Saudi Arabia is ending the war, which seems very difficult to do at the moment. But by merely spreading awareness of this crisis, it could help slow the effects of the famine by possibly helping fund more food shipments.
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