Deeply disappointed to hear UK govt is halving aid to Yemen. Timing is inexplicable with the UN warning only last week that Yemen faces the worst famine the world has seen for decades. In their words it is ‘falling off a cliff’. Thread...
https://twitter.com/BBCJLandale/status/1366412098029432839
In their appeal for MORE funding, the UN cited aid cuts from other countries last year which cut 4 million people off from food aid, who are now ‘in the long, slow, brutal, painful, agonizing process of starving to death’. washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e…
UNICEF say 2 million children are acutely malnourished and over 368,000 children under 5 are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. 1.7million children are internally displaced. Only 1 in 3 people have access to running water. unicef.org.uk/donate/yemen/
As Foreign Sec I helped get the Stockholm talks going in Dec 2018, and was the first Western Foreign Minister to meet Houthi representatives. My takeaway: the path to peace is unbelievably fragile & as UNSC pen-holder the UK has a critical leadership role to play.
This feels like an inevitable consequence of the flawed decision to step away from the 0.7% commitment. It is unlikely to be noticed with so much else on but will cost lives and discourage other countries from playing their part.
But abandoning a forgotten country and people is inconsistent with our values, weakens our moral authority and reduces our influence. We should be increasing the scale of our support in the face of such suffering; to cut it at this moment of extreme peril is incomprehensible.
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