World Bank: Yemenis Are Living a Bitter Struggle for Survival

Displaced people in Taiz, Yemen, receive UN aid (AFP)
Displaced people in Taiz, Yemen, receive UN aid (AFP)
TT

World Bank: Yemenis Are Living a Bitter Struggle for Survival

Displaced people in Taiz, Yemen, receive UN aid (AFP)
Displaced people in Taiz, Yemen, receive UN aid (AFP)

The lives of Yemeni people have been marked by hardship, uncertainty, and a bitter struggle for survival, with many resorting to extreme coping mechanisms, including reducing meal frequency since the outbreak of the civil war eight years ago, announced the World Bank.

In its new report, Voices from Yemen, the World Bank aims to shed light on Yemenis’ experiences, providing a human context for the quantitative data presented in 'Surviving in the Times of War.’

Over four years (2019-2022), the team conducted in-depth interviews with 156 individuals from different governorates across Yemen.

One of the themes that emerged from these interviews was the prevalence of food insecurity.

The report noted that to stretch limited resources, families have had to resort to extreme coping mechanisms, including reducing meal frequency, limiting the variety of food they consume, and prioritizing which family members eat.

A male respondent from al-Mahwit described the agonizing trade-offs his family is forced to make, as he and his wife would sometimes sleep without dinner.

He recalled that sometimes, when he has money for dinner, his wife tells him that the kids need milk, so he buys them milk, and they sleep without having dinner. “The kids are more important."

Children have also been hit hard in their education journeys. Schools are underfunded, teachers are scarce, and many families cannot afford to send their children to school.

A school principal from Hajjah depicts the dire state of education, saying his school has 1,050 students and has only six rooms, one of which is used as a residence for the teachers, one for the principal’s office, and the remaining four rooms for the classes.

He explained that the school has three shifts for different grades.

The World Bank warned that healthcare access is equally compromised, with many individuals forgoing medical care except in the most severe emergencies due to high costs and limited availability of services.

The report interviewed a health worker from Hodeidah who said that they used to offer services and medicine for free.

However, now they have to charge the patients and write them a prescription to buy medicine from pharmacies. People stopped coming because they can’t afford all that, given that commuting here will also cost them a lot.

It is even a hardship for staff who spend half of their salaries on transportation, according to the participant.

- Hardships

The report indicated that internally displaced Yemenis are grappling with an added layer of hardship.

They navigate a perilous journey to safety and struggle to secure the necessities for survival as they continue to face the threat of displacement, the erosion of their livelihoods, and rising living costs.

The World Bank asserted that the conflict and subsequent humanitarian response had disrupted the local economy, affecting all sectors, from education to healthcare.

It warned that displacement further compounds these challenges, affecting food availability, education access, health provision, and livelihood stability.

The Bank highlighted that these narratives reflect the scale of the suffering, as well as how the Yemeni people often have no other choice than to endure while turning to destructive coping strategies.

The report underscored the urgency for comprehensive and sustainable solutions to alleviate the tremendous hardships faced by Yemen's people.

It called upon policymakers, humanitarian actors, and the international community to move beyond short-term aid and towards interventions that restore more sustainable livelihoods, address the root causes of the crisis, and build a foundation for a more stable and prosperous Yemen.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TT

Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".