Human Lives Human Rights: Yemen marks the seventh anniversary of the Saudi-led war on the country today.
On March 26, 2015 Saudi Arabia launched the bloody war against Yemen in collaboration of a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its allies also imposed heavy blockade on Yemen. The objective was to return to power the former Riyadh-backed regime headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and to crush Yemen’s Popular Resistance Movement.
Despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, the war has turned Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Seven years since the escalation of conflict in Yemen, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns that civilians are still bearing the brunt of war.
Since 2015, over 19,000 civilians have been killed or injured from just airstrikes, including 139 civilian fatalities and 187 civilians injured in January 2022 alone, the most casualties seen in one month since the start of the war.
The economic impacts of the war and year-on-year underfunding of the Yemen humanitarian response plan have led to widespread need and have left 17 million people facing acute food insecurity. Over 20 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
According to the Yemen Data Project, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes caused more civilian harm in the first month of 2022 than in the two previous years combined, while attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by Houthi rebels targeted on strategic positions.
Violence has also severely damaged civilian infrastructure. Over 25,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed and the number of out of school children has more than doubled since the start of the war – from 900,000 to over 2 million.
As Yemen enters its eighth year of conflict, international attention must prioritize the safety and protection of civilians. A nationwide ceasefire is urgently required and is the only way to end the humanitarian catastrophe.
