A source from the United Nations in Sanaa told ‘Sputnik’ that the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Food Program have informed several of their employees that their contracts will be terminated at the end of this year due to reduced funding from donors for their humanitarian and relief projects in Yemen.
The source added that the international organizations announced their intention to list the vacated positions for competition, after reducing the number of positions by 30 percent. This is the second such action by the United Nations since the beginning of this year, as the organization took a similar step last March, two months after the White House announced, on January 22, the inclusion of ‘Ansar Allah’ on the list of foreign terrorist organizations due to the group’s attacks on U.S. Navy ships ‘dozens of times since 2023.’
Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen announced receiving $37 million in funding to support the humanitarian response plan in Yemen for this year, bringing the total funding for the plan to $412 million, with a funding gap estimated at $2.07 billion, which is equivalent to 83.4 percent of the total humanitarian appeal for Yemen amounting to $2.48 billion to meet the humanitarian needs of approximately 10.5 million people during 2025.
On January 20, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to suspend foreign aid funding through the United States Agency for International Development for 90 days pending a review of funding policies. The United States announced on May 8 last year that it would provide approximately $220 million in additional humanitarian aid to the Yemeni people, including $200 million through the United States Agency for International Development and about $20 million through the U.S. Department of State, noting that the total U.S. assistance for the humanitarian response in Yemen has reached about $5.9 billion since the conflict began in September 2014.
Yemen has been experiencing a fragile truce since the United Nations announced on October 2, 2022, that the Yemeni government and the ‘Ansar Allah’ group had not reached an agreement to extend and expand the six-month truce. The Arab country suffers from ongoing power struggles between the internationally recognized government and the ‘Ansar Allah’ group, which have resulted in a humanitarian crisis described by the United Nations as one of the worst in the world.
The ongoing war in Yemen, until late 2021, has claimed the lives of 377,000 people and caused cumulative economic losses estimated at $126 billion. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the population, which is about 35 million people, are in need of humanitarian aid, according to United Nations reports.
