As Yemen marks ten years of war, humanitarian organizations including the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warn that a widening gap between humanitarian needs and the funding needed to meet them risks leaving millions of Yemenis without access to food, health care and protection. After a decade of crisis, humanitarian needs in Yemen continue to rise, particularly among children.
In 2025, an estimated 19.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection - an increase of nearly 7 percent from 2024. Nationwide, more than 83 percent of the population now lives in poverty, while an estimated 4.8 million people remain displaced across Yemen.
“For ten years, Yemenis have endured relentless conflict, economic collapse, and limited access to lifesaving health and nutrition services. Humanitarian aid has been their lifeline-preventing disease outbreaks, delivering healthcare, responding to natural disasters, and helping families to survive,” said Caroline Sekyewa, IRC Country Director in Yemen, in a statement on Wednesday.
She warned that for donor governments to consider reducing or withdrawing this support is not only short-sighted, it puts millions of lives at risk.
“Yemen now stands on a precipice and without urgent support, we risk reversing years of hard-fought gains. Ultimately, humanitarian aid on its own cannot end the suffering being felt by millions in Yemen,” Sekyewa said.
“After a decade of crisis, political solutions and economic recovery are now needed more than ever to secure long-term stability. Yet the fact is that today, aid is what stands between life and death for millions.”
The IRC said 2025 must be a turning point in this crisis and called on all donors to step up and ensure that this year's humanitarian needs and response plan is fully funded.
Despite these growing needs, the humanitarian response remains critically underfunded. The 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) requests $2.47 billion to reach 10.5 million people - but as of today, it is only 7 percent funded.
Last year's Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) requested $2.7 billion to reach 11.2 million people in need across the country. As of January 2025, the 2024 HRP was only 53 percent funded. Despite funding shortfalls and other challenges, 197 aid organizations reached more than 8 million people with life-saving assistance last year - two-thirds of which were local Yemeni organizations.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN organization, said on Wednesday that women and children are among the hardest hit, facing increased risks of violence, malnutrition and poor health. At the same time, floods, droughts and extreme weather events are exacerbating an already dire situation.
Yet as funding shortfalls worsen, humanitarian efforts are unable to keep pace, leaving countless people in dire need.
“The war in Yemen has faded from global attention, but for those living through it, the suffering has never stopped,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope, stressing that Yemen remains one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises.
“However, as global attention shifts elsewhere, funding is dwindling. Now, more than ever, global solidarity is needed to prevent millions from being left behind.”
More than half a million children severely malnourished
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday that a decade of conflict has been catastrophic for the country's children, who live under the threat of airstrikes and staggeringly high rates of malnutrition.
“We need to move fast,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF representative in Yemen.
“I was in Hudaydah over the past three days [...] I went through the western lowlands, where there are people on the streets, on the side of the roads, begging and looking for assistance. They have given up. We cannot give up.”
Speaking from Yemen's capital, Sanaa, Hawkins told reporters that the "man-made" disaster has decimated Yemen's economy, health care system and infrastructure.
“Even during periods of reduced violence, the structural consequences of the conflict, especially for girls and boys, have remained severe,” he said, underscoring that more than half of the country's nearly 40 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.
UNICEF supports life-saving health facilities and malnutrition treatment throughout the country, but its operations are only 25 per cent funded this year. Without urgent funding, the UN agency will not be able to maintain even minimal services, Hawkins warned.
Houthi rebels - formally known as Ansar Allah - have been fighting government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition for more than a decade, toppling the country's president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in January 2015. The Houthis control large parts of Yemen after seizing the capital and ousting the internationally recognized government.
The conflict between the Saudi-led coalition of Gulf states and the overthrown Yemeni government on the one hand and the Ansar Allah movement on the other escalated in March 2015 when Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against the Houthis and forces allied with the Houthis, plunging Yemen into a devastating humanitarian emergency.
Military support for the coalition from the United States, the United Kingdom and France fueled the conflict and exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.
Since the entry into force of a six-month United Nations-brokered ceasefire in April 2022, large-scale ground operations in Yemen have not resumed, but military activity continues, and the ceasefire has not been formally extended. Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen, warned in a briefing to the UN Security Council earlier this month that the suspension of hostilities was increasingly at risk.
Although the reduction in armed conflict in the country since April 2022 has led to a reduction in civilian casualties and suffering, the situation remains precarious without a lasting political solution in Yemen and a lasting resolution to the Gaza war.
Since February, the United States has launched several airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas of the country, reportedly in retaliation for the Houthis' targeting of merchant and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The UNICEF official spoke of the damage he witnessed firsthand in the port city of Hudaydah, stressing that eight children were killed in recent airstrikes in northern Yemen.
“Critical ports and roads, lifelines for food and medicine, are damaged and blockaded,” he said, adding that food prices have soared over 300 percent in the past decade, driving hunger and malnutrition.
Hawkins said that one in two children under the age of five in Yemen is malnourished, "a statistic that is almost unparalleled in the world."
“Among them are over 540,000 girls and boys who are severely and acutely malnourished, a condition that is agonizing, life-threatening and entirely preventable,” he added.
Hawkins highlighted the dangers faced by children who cannot access treatment because they are “away from service delivery in the most remote areas up on the mountains, and deep down in the valleys of northern Yemen.”
“Malnutrition weakens immune systems, stunts growth and robs children of their potential,” he added.
Furthermore, some 1.4 million pregnant and lactating women are malnourished in Yemen – “a vicious circle of intergenerational suffering”, the UNICEF official said.
In some areas, including the west of the country, severe and acute malnutrition rates of 33 percent have been recorded.
“It's not a humanitarian crisis. It's not an emergency. It is a catastrophe where thousands will die,” Hawkins stressed.
Further information
Full text: A decade of conflict in Yemen: Humanitarian lifeline on the brink, warns the IRC, IRC, press release, published March 26, 2025
https://www.rescue.org/press-release/decade-conflict-yemen-humanitarian-lifeline-brink-warns-irc
Full text: IOM Chief Sounds Alarm as Yemen Marks a Decade of War and Humanitarian Despair, IOM, press release, published March 26, 2025
https://www.iom.int/news/iom-chief-sounds-alarm-yemen-marks-decade-war-and-humanitarian-despair
Full text: Geneva Palais briefing note on the situation for children in Yemen after 10 years of conflict, UNICEF, press release, published March 25, 2025
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/geneva-palais-briefing-note-situation-children-yemen-after-10-years-conflict