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UN / YEMEN HUMANITARIAN APPEAL
STORY: UN / YEMEN HUMANITARIAN APPEAL
TRT: 02:55
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 8 FEBRUARY 2017, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
FILE - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior of the UN
8 FEBRUARY 2017, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:
“Today more than 18.8 million people – that is two third of the total population of Yemen – are affected. Immense human suffering is unfolding in front of our eyes caused by conflict compounded by collapsing economy and key public and social institutions are in disarray. Yemen is one of the most food insecure countries in the world; a staggering 7.3 million people do not know where their next meal is coming from. If there is no immediate action and despite the ongoing humanitarian efforts, famine is now a real possibility for 2017.”
4. Wide shot, reporters
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:
“Humanitarian access in Yemen is severely limited due to fighting and bureaucratic impediments. To the parties to the conflict I remind them granting rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access is a key obligation under International Humanitarian Law. We urgently need both the resources and the humanitarian access to provide the life line that millions of Yemenis depend on.”
6. Close up, reporter
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen:
“There is a 3.3 million children, lactating and pregnant women who are in such a serious acutely malnourished situation and of that, there is about 460,000 children under the age of five who are suffering severe acute malnutrition.”
8. Wide shot, journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen:
“What you have now is a situation of a 23 month conflict which has slowed down the ability for people to have a productive capacity, fishermen can’t fish, farmers can’t farm, civil servants don’t get paid, so the ability for them to cope with that crisis is been exacerbated by the conflict and so what you have is people have to make life and death decisions: do you feed your child or your children or do you pay for medical treatment for the sick child?”
10. Med shot, journalists
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen:
“Mainly people never make it to the feeding centres or the hospitals because they can’t afford the transport and there are many people dying silent deaths. Silent deaths because unrecorded, unrecognised because 50 percent of the health facilities don’t function, they don’t have the money to send the children to these centres to pay for bus fares and taxis, and so when you see a child would die of respiratory infections, diarrheal disease or pneumonia, but the fundamental part of this is the fact that nutritional foundation is not there and that is why they are so fragile and so unable to counter disease and that is how they die.”
12. Wide shot, dais
The United Nations and humanitarian partners today (8 Feb) launched an international appeal for USD 2.1 billion to provide life-saving assistance to twelve million people in Yemen in 2017. It is the largest consolidated humanitarian appeal for this country ever launched.
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, told reporters in Geneva that “today more than 18.8 million people – that is two third of the total population of Yemen – are affected. Immense human suffering is unfolding in front of our eyes caused by conflict compounded by collapsing economy and key public and social institutions are in disarray.”
O’Brien said “Yemen is one of the most food insecure countries in the world,” adding that “a staggering 7.3 million people do not know where their next meal is coming from. If there is no immediate action and despite the ongoing humanitarian efforts, famine is now a real possibility for 2017.”
An estimated 10.3 million people are acutely affected and need some form of immediate humanitarian assistance to save and sustain their lives including food, health and medical services, clean water and sanitation.
According to O’Brien over 5.6 million people were reached in Yemen in 2016 with direct humanitarian aid. He said “humanitarian access in Yemen is severely limited due to fighting and bureaucratic impediments. To the parties to the conflict I remind them granting rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access is a key obligation under International Humanitarian Law.”
Since March 2015, violent conflict and disregard by all parties to the conflict for their responsibility to protect civilians have created a vast humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said “3.3 million children, lactating and pregnant women who are in a serious acutely malnourished situation and 460,000 children under the age of five who are suffering severe acute malnutrition.”
Calling it one of the biggest food crisis in the world, McGoldrick said that “what you have now is a situation of a 23 month conflict which has slowed down the ability for people to have a productive capacity, fishermen can’t fish, farmers can’t farm, civil servants don’t get paid, so the ability for them to cope with that crisis is been exacerbated by the conflict and so what you have is people have to make life and death decisions: do you feed your child or your children or do you pay for medical treatment for the sick child?”
The Yemen Humanitarian Coordinator described the “situation in Yemen as catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating”. He said that “mainly people never make it to the feeding centres or the hospitals because they can’t afford the transport and there are many people dying silent deaths. Silent deaths because unrecorded, unrecognised because 50 percent of the health facilities don’t function, they don’t have the money to send the children to these centres to pay for bus fares and taxis”.
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