Yemen fighting displaces 71,000 children, worsens malnutrition: UNICEF

Fighting in Yemen is disrupting access to healthcare and treatment centres, causing a rise in acute malnutrition among children, the ⁠United Nations children’s agency has said.

Yemen’s UNICEF country representative, Akhil Iyer, told reporters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on Friday that hunger and malnutrition are afflicting an ever-increasing number of children in Yemen, as violence escalates in the country.

Iyer said that 71,000 children are among the nearly 130,000 people displaced in Yemen over the past three weeks, most of whom were uprooted from or within the southwestern governorate of Taiz.

“Conflict drives hunger, and hunger makes children more vulnerable to conflict,” Iyer told reporters via videolink from Aden.

He added that UNICEF is “very concerned about a very visible increase in ⁠acute malnutrition among children”.

UNICEF mobile teams screened nearly 2,900 children in accessible areas in recent weeks. More than a quarter were acutely malnourished, Iyer said, with 200 of those considered “severe” – the worst category.

In addition to the increasing cases of child malnutrition in areas it can access, UNICEF said this was only a ‌snapshot of the situation unfolding across the country, where 2.2 million children under five are projected to be acutely malnourished this year, and ‌more than ‌half a million projected to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

Iyer also said UNICEF had verified that at least 15 children were killed and 14 injured in the conflict since early September, while three were still reported missing.