SANA’A (Dispatches) – Fifty-three percent of those displaced in Yemen due to the Saudi-led war are children, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced.
The humanitarian organization 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”.
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 conflict, mainly around Ma’rib and the Hudaydah, 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.
The organization 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.”
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s government back to power and crushing popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees have, however, gone from strength to strength against the Saudi invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
The Saudi war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. The war has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases across the Arab country.