UN: 53% of displaced Yemenis are children

Fifty-three per cent of those displaced in Yemen are children, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced yesterday.

The humanitarian organisation explained that Yemeni refugees are struggling “even more when being forced to flee their homes.”

“In #Yemen, 53% of those displaced by the ongoing conflict are children,” the UNHCR said on Twitter, adding that in spite of this, “they always find a way to be happy”.

In #Yemen, 53% of those displaced by the ongoing conflict are children.

They struggle even more when being forced to flee their homes.

Despite all this, they always find a way to be happy, like these children in Marib. pic.twitter.com/kV0HVSUkZ2

— UNHCR Yemen (@UNHCRYemen) July 26, 2021

Save the Children recently reported that nine out of ten Yemeni children in refugee camps did not have access to “food, water, schooling.”

“In 2020, an estimated 115,000 children were forced to flee their homes because of the escalating violence, mainly around Marib and the Hodeida, Hajjah and Taiz regions,” Save the Children said in a press release, noting that some 25,000 children and their families had to leave their homes since the beginning of 2021.

❗️PRESS RELEASE: Nine out of ten displaced children in #Yemen struggle to have food, water, schooling.https://t.co/h2x3rwWIF5

— Save the Children Yemen (@SaveChildrenYE) July 14, 2021

The organisation called on international donors “to improve and increase access to the displaced communities, and to ensure that they have the basics and their children are protected.”

Impoverished Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Houthis ousted the government from power in the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014. The war escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to support the embattled government.

The conflict has displaced nearly four million Yemenis, according to UN data.

READ: Yemen living conditions harshest in history