SAVE THE CHILDREN STATEMENT ON UN YEMEN PLEDGING CONFERENCE

Tuesday, 25 April 2017 - 3:58pm

As the United Nations announces aid pledges for Yemen totalling $1.1 billion, more than half of the $2.1 billion requested from donors, Save the Children is calling on the international community to do more to ensure aid can reach children quickly.

Grant Pritchard, Interim Director of Save the Children in Yemen, said:

“For these pledges to mean anything at all, aid must be able to reach children quickly. Right now the Saudi-led coalition is obstructing vital supplies arriving at Yemen’s main port of Hodeida. Warring parties are detaining aid workers and hampering deliveries by land. And make no mistake: these delays are killing children.

“On three occasions this year the coalition has held up our shipments of life-saving medical aid – including antibiotics, surgical equipment, medicine to treat diseases like malaria and cholera, and supplies to keep malnourished children alive. Pledges of aid are needed and welcome. But while food and aid continue to be used as weapons of war and no one is held accountable, children will continue to suffer.

“All parties in this brutal war have been responsible for the unnecessary deaths of children. They must be held to account. Millions of children and their families have no idea where their next meal is coming from, or where the next bomb will fall.”