LONDON (AlertNet) - U.N. agencies have warned they will have to start scaling back aid to a quarter of a million people uprooted by conflict in northern Yemen unless donors commit more money for the provision of food, water and other life-saving relief.
Following a fragile ceasefire which came into effect on Feb. 11, aid agencies want to reach more people, including thousands who were trapped by fighting in and around Saada city, the stronghold of Yemen's Shi'ite rebels. But even existing aid work is under threat from the low level of international financial support.
"We are very worried about the lack of funding," Pratibha Mehta, the United Nations' resident coordinator for Yemen, told AlertNet in a telephone interview from the capital Sanaa. "The needs are very big, and it's been six months that the humanitarian actors have been assisting and everyone is now running short of food, cash and stocks.
"Most of the U.N. agencies will not have stock perhaps beyond June, and so instead of scaling up our response, we will be forced to scale down our response, which will be extremely damaging to people because these are essentially life-saving needs."
As of Feb. 26, donors had pledged less than 4 percent of the appeal for $177.5 million launched jointly by aid agencies in Yemen at the end of November. That does not include an allocation of $7 million in January from the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund, which gives grants to boost aid efforts in neglected emergencies around the world.
Almost 242,000 Yemenis have fled fighting between government troops and Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis after their leader's clan, which intensified in August and drew in Saudi Arabia against the rebels in November.
Conflict has raged sporadically in Yemen's rugged northern mountains since 2004, with the Houthis complaining of religious, economic and social deprivation.
Only 214,000 of the displaced have received food aid and just 138,000 have been provided with non-food items including tents, blankets and kitchen sets.
According to a recent survey by the U.N. World Food Programme, one in three Yemenis - or 7.5 million people - suffer chronic hunger. This makes Yemen one of the countries worst affected by hunger in the world.
The agency said last week it needs $10 million more to keep feeding those uprooted in the north through June. It has already had to reduce rations, and warns that by April they will have to be cut to as low as 450 calories per person per day - less than a quarter of the recommended amount.
SECURITY FEARS
Yemen, which also faces separatist unrest in the south, has shot to the forefront of Western security concerns since the Yemeni arm of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner over Detroit in December.
Mehta, the top U.N. official in the country, said the international community cannot afford to ignore the humanitarian crisis.
"It is in the interests of everyone in the region and elsewhere to ensure that Yemen stabilises because the instability will affect everyone, and definitely the humanitarian assistance is part of that," she said.
"The people are ... in urgent need of relief - food, water, sanitation - and if they don't have this, their lives are in danger. But it can also create frustration and other psychosocial problems."
A meeting in Riyadh on Saturday of the wealthy six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to discuss aid to Yemen is expected to focus more on longer-term economic development than immediate humanitarian needs.
Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) who visited Yemen this month, says donors may have been slow to provide funds because of the huge and immediate demands arising from January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, as well as the squeeze on government budgets from the global financial crisis.
UNHCR has been forced to borrow $4.7 million internally to continue its activities in the north until June. The money will be spent on registering and documenting the displaced population, providing shelter and other basic items, expanding overcrowded camps and building new ones in the north.
According to Mahecic, only a little over 10 percent of all displaced have found shelter in camps, and life is even tougher for those living outside them in informal settlements, with host families or in rented accommodation.
It is getting harder for them to make ends meet, he says, as they had to leave everything behind, including their animals, and many are running out of money. Some are resorting to selling cherished personal belongings such as jewellery.
"CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM"
Hostilities in north Yemen appear to have significantly eased since the truce came into effect two weeks ago, although some violence and truce breaches have been reported.
Mahecic said there was "cautious optimism" among the aid community and displaced population, with many families sending one member back to the conflict zone to assess the damage to property and whether it is safe to return home.
"We hope the ceasefire will hold and there will be some stability which will allow people to consider returning - and most of them want to go back - but everybody is cautious about it," he said.
Security for returnees is a major concern, with mines and other unexploded ordnance posing a serious risk. UNHCR says these weapons will have to be removed before most people can go home, together with the resumption of basic services.
Aid workers have been unable to access Saada city and its surrounding area because of the violence, and say they do not know how many people were unable to escape the fighting there and might need assistance.
The United Nations hopes to send in a team to the conflict zone within two weeks to assess the extent of the damage and the needs of the local population once roads have been cleared of mines and roadblocks removed.
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