Yemen food crisis a 'man-made disaster': UN

Auke Lootsma told UN reporters on Tuesday by video conference from the capital of Sanaa that "there is no end in sight" to the civil war, which began in September 2014.

United Nations, Aug 2: The UN development chief in Yemen has called the food crisis in the country "a man-made disaster".

He said the crisis that left millions hungry and left Yemen on the brink of famine was driven not only by decades of poverty and lack of investment but also by economic strangulation used as a tactic of war.

Auke Lootsma told UN reporters on Tuesday by video conference from the capital of Sanaa that "there is no end in sight" to the civil war, which began in September 2014.

He said about 70 per cent of the country's 27 million people need humanitarian aid and nearly 7 million are close to famine. He said the UN has recorded almost 400,000 cases of cholera and nearly 1,900 related deaths the past four months. There also has been a meningitis outbreak in the last two weeks.

The Yemen crisis began with the 2011-12 revolution against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had led Yemen for more than two decades. After Saleh left office in early 2012 as part of a mediated agreement between the Yemeni government and opposition groups, the government led by Saleh's former vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, struggled to unite the fractious political landscape of the country and fend off threats both from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Houthi militants that had been waging a protracted insurgency in the north for years.

PTI