The Yemen War is one of the Most Destructive since the Cold War. Child deaths to soar if war continues - UN
A recent UN report
sheds light on the devastating humanitarian and economic impact of the war in
Yemen and how it sets back human development there more than 20 years, Anadolu reports.
The report by the
organization’s development program (UNDP) highlights the humanitarian situation
there, which was one of the worst in the world even prior to the war, but has
gotten worse since tensions escalated. With its 30 million
people, Yemen ranked 153 on the Human Development Index, 138 in extreme
poverty, 147 in life expectancy, 172 in educational attainment and was already
on the World Bank’s low-middle income category, according to the report.
Experts suggest “Yemen
would not have achieved any of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” set
out by the UN to reach by 2030 even in the absence of conflict. The UNDP’s Yemen
representative, Auke Lootsma, said “even if there were to be peace tomorrow, it
could take decades for Yemen to return to pre-conflict levels of developments.”
The report paints a
gloomy picture for the foreseeable future and places Yemen among the most
destructive conflict zones since the end of the Cold War. If the war were to end
in 2019, the UNDP projects it would account for 140,000 deaths of children
under the age of 5; 233,000 deaths (0.8% of the 2019 population) with 102,000
combat deaths and 131,000 indirect deaths due to lack of food, health services
and infrastructure.
It estimates infant
mortality will further exacerbate — 331,000 deaths of children under 5 — with one
child death every 7 minutes and 482,000 deaths in total if the conflict
continues until 2022. The outlook gets
bleaker if the conflict continues through 2030. The report estimates
1.5 million children die at a rate of one every two minutes and 1.8 million
Yemenis die in total — overwhelmingly, not in combat but indirectly because of
the lack of humanitarian needs... read more:
