More than three years have passed since the outbreak of the military conflict in Yemen. The international community, however, seems unable to force Houthi rebels to abide by international law or join peace talks under the supervision of the United Nations. The UN Security Council supported the move by the Saudi-led coalition to launch a military operation for the return to power of the legitimate government of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.The big powers failed, however, to take firm action against the Houthis and Iran, their supporting power, to end this illegal act against the elected government. Instead some powers criticised Saudi Arabia and the other states involved in this coalition for the suffering of the Yemeni people who cannot obtain their basic needs of food and medicine because of this war. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres confronted the world with its responsibility when, this week, he organised a conference to raise aid for the Yemeni people. The war in Yemen is now the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people – three-quarters of the population – in desperate need of aid and protection, Guterres said at the donor conference held in Geneva on Tuesday. Guterres asked for around three billion dollars in aid for the Yemeni people, a request that immediately met with a positive response from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who jointly offered one billion dollars of the sum. Some $930 million from the Saudi and Emirati funds have been allocated to UN organisations and $70 million to rehabilitate Yemeni ports and roads so as to increase the volume of relief items and commercial imports going to Yemen. Guterres said that over eight million people in the country "did not know where they would obtain their next meal," and that "every ten minutes, a child under five dies of preventable causes." As well as the spread of life threatening epidemics nearly half of all children aged between six months and five years old are chronically malnourished, Guterres said. It is true that three billion dollars won't end the catastrophe the Yemeni people are living through, but it could help prevent the country from becoming a long-term tragedy. And, just as Yemen needs a swift supply of financial aid to alleviate this terrible humanitarian crisis, pressuring the warring parties to resort to peace talks should be the focus of the UN at this juncture in order to reach a political settlement to this dispute.
