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Yemen on Brink of Famine Due to Grain Shortage

Yemenis fill their jerrycans with water from a well at a makeshift camp for people who fled the conflict, in the village of Hays in Yemen's western province of Hodeidah, on May 17, 2022. (AFP)
Yemenis fill their jerrycans with water from a well at a makeshift camp for people who fled the conflict, in the village of Hays in Yemen's western province of Hodeidah, on May 17, 2022. (AFP)
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Yemen on Brink of Famine Due to Grain Shortage

Yemenis fill their jerrycans with water from a well at a makeshift camp for people who fled the conflict, in the village of Hays in Yemen's western province of Hodeidah, on May 17, 2022. (AFP)
Yemenis fill their jerrycans with water from a well at a makeshift camp for people who fled the conflict, in the village of Hays in Yemen's western province of Hodeidah, on May 17, 2022. (AFP)

For the first time in years since the Houthi coup, major commercial suppliers have sounded the alarm in Yemen, warning of an imminent famine in the country as a result of the rise in global wheat prices and diminishing stocks.

The Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group, Yemen's largest company and leading wheat importer, issued a stark warning of impending mass famine as a result of unprecedented disruption to global wheat supplies generated by the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine.

It said global wheat prices are set to rise further due to the export ban on Indian wheat that recently came into effect.

The United Nations had warned in April that over 25.5 million Yemenis out of the country’s 30 million people are living below the poverty line due to the war in their country.

HSA therefore called for immediate international intervention to avert another humanitarian catastrophe in the coming months, proposing that international and regional organizations explore innovative solutions to ensure sufficient wheat supplies reach Yemeni communities.

Nabil Hayel Saeed Anam, managing director of the company, said that during this current period of global uncertainty, HSA has taken steps to ensure access to basic commodities "so that we can continue to provide affordable food and essential goods to Yemeni people."

“This includes making use of our $75 million loan agreement with the International Finance Corporation, which has allowed us to mobilize working capital rapidly in the face of rising wheat prices to secure sufficient supplies of this daily staple for Yemen,” he said.

Hayel Saeed Anam added that desperate times call for bold action.

“We stand ready to work hand-in-hand with our international and regional partners to help put in place emergency mechanisms to respond to Yemen's food security crisis that will enable the private sector to access and fund wheat imports in the immediate term,” he said.

“Without an urgent intervention, there is an immediate and definitive risk that we will not be able to prevent a wave of extreme hunger from engulfing the country and pushing hundreds of thousands into famine,” he added.

Despite the series of warnings for urgent solutions and proposals to avoid a shortage of wheat supplies to Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthi militias and their unrecognized government continue to deliberately ignore the gravity of this potential disaster, while continuing to hinder the work of relief groups.

Informed sources in Sanaa said the militias have recently instructed their supporters in the occupied capital, Sanaa, to stop the operation of many local humanitarian and charitable institutions in several cities under their control.

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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.

In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.

Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.

In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.

By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.

But not everyone makes it in time.

On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.

But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.