Fars News Agency – The UN children’s agency UNICEF revealed that the brutal war in Yemen has worsened the humanitarian situation for mothers and babies in the country, with one mother and six newborns dying every two hours due to a lack of health services.
As the world approaches the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), mothers and children continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen, Yemeni News reported. The brutal conflict continues to cost the lives of civilians, with a mother and six newborns dying every two hours due to poor health care services, the UNICEF said in a report.
In the country profoundly affected by a humanitarian crisis, one out of every 260 women dies during pregnancy and childbirth, and one out of 37 newborns dies in its first month of life, UNICEF added, revealing the lack of routine primary healthcare services, crucial for supporting mothers and childbirth.
The report indicated that, “One of the war’s repercussions that befell Yemen is the clear assault on motherhood and paternity”, noting that “only 51 percent of all health facilities are operating at full capacity. Thus, these facilities suffer from a severe shortage of medicines, equipment and personnel”. UNICEF also announced that “the rate of births that take place at home is also increasing because Yemeni families are getting poorer every day”.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures. Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands.
According to a December 2018 report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.
Save the Children, a charity, has reported that more than 84,700 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen since the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the already-impoverished nation.
France, the United States, the Uinted Kingdom and some other Western countries have faced criticisms over arms sales to the Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose aggression against Yemen has affected 28 million people and caused what the United Nations calls “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world”. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.
