UN warns of Yemen turning into another Somalia

A senior UN official is urging the international community, in particular Yemen's neighbours, to increase humanitarian and development aid to the country or risk seeing Yemen fall into chaos and anarchy. "If Yemen does not get international help it is a new Somalia in the making, " Naveed Hussain, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Yemen told the Kuwait news agency, KUNA, in an interview during a visit to Brussels on Friday. "Yemen is a country which is going through a lot of upheaval and it is a kind of forgotten crisis," he said and lamented that Yemen "is seen by the international community largely as a security issue and not a development or humanitarian issue." Hussain noted that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have helped in making a political compromise in Yemen and sign the agreement in 2011. "And that has helped. But the humanitarian side of it is largely forgotten, " said the UN official. Through this GCC initiative, a proces has started called the National Dialogue to bring all the elements in Yemen together and try to agree what the future of Yemen will be, said Hussain. He, however, stressed that things will not change unless peoples lives are changed. Yemen is at a critical point. If people do not see any difference made by the transition government then they will ask why they fought so much to get (ex-President Abdullah Saleh) removed, he said . "If the transition is not successful there is no plan B for Yemen. Yemen could very easily collapse into a political chaos," he warned. The UN official explained that Yemen is the poorest country in the region and one of the poorest countries in the world. People live on less than 1 euro per day and has malnutrition rates which in some areas reach 30 percent. He noted that there are a lot of refugees coming to Yemen from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Last year, over 100, 000 came and this year already 70, 000 people have arrived. On top of that there are about 500,000 internally displaced persons inside Yemen. "For Yemen to sustain this increasing burden is becoming impossible", he underlined. He noted that the recent donor conference on Yemen held in Riyadh pledged over 6 billion euro, half of which was pledged by Saudi Arabia. "But they need to do more. There is a good feeling about Yemen in the Gulf countries. But there has to be a more growing feeling that if these people continue to come to Yemen and they are not helped there, they will eventually come to the Gulf," he said. Hussain told KUNA that since the signing of the agreement over, 300,000 Yemenis have crossed into Saudi Arabia. "The flow of the refugees is not only a Yemeni problem but a regional and an international one. As we speak every day between 400 to 500 people come to Yemen from the Horn of Africa," he said. Hussain said he was in Brussels to talk to EU officials about the humanitarian situation in Yemen. The UN has launched an appeal for Yemen for USD 583 million and has received till now 272 mn. In 2012, UNHCR in Yemen is seeking almost 60 million USD and have received 40 million. "So we are asking the EU to help us with that. They have been supportive of our programme," he said. Hussain, who hails from Pakistan, has been with the UNHCR for over 18 years and has served in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia and Switzerland before being appointed to Yemen a year ago.