An international donor conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia, with the participation of the United Nations, failed to raise the funding needed to meet Yemen's humanitarian needs in the coming months. While the UAE did not announce any financial contribution, the Houthis considered Riyadh's hosting of the conference an investment in Yemeni blood.
The conference was held on Tuesday in Riyadh by a television circle with the participation of more than 130 donor countries and international institutions. The United Nations said that its participants had pledged $ 1 billion and $ 350 million in humanitarian aid to Yemen, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that international relief agencies estimated the funding required to cover humanitarian aid to Yemen from June to December at $ 2.4 billion.
The pledges announced are half of the $ 2.6 billion promised by international donors at the conference held last year, according to the Associated Press.
Saudi Arabia has pledged to pay $ 500 million, which is the largest pledged pledge, while the UAE - its partner in the coalition that has been waging war in Yemen since 2015 - has not announced any contribution from it.
The United States also pledged 225 million dollars in aid to Yemen, 200 million dollars in Britain, and 125 million dollars in Germany.
Prior to the new donors' conference, the United Nations warned that about thirty of its humanitarian programs in Yemen would stop in the next few weeks, if the required funding was not available to face the crises in this country, including the outbreak of the Corona virus and other epidemics, as well as the collapse of the system Health due to the war that has been going on in Yemen for more than five years.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, called on the international community to take immediate action to help the Yemeni people before the humanitarian situation worsens in the country facing the vow of a comprehensive medical collapse.
For his part, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Marc Lukoc, warned of the high number of deaths in Yemen during the coming period if he was not provided with the necessary humanitarian assistance, and Lukek described during his participation in the donors conference the situation in Yemen as a disaster, in light of the rapid spread of Corona virus and the complete collapse To the health system.
For its part, the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said that the donors conference is an initiative among the efforts aimed at mobilizing international support to alleviate the difficult humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
An investment in blood
Al-Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Al-Ajri considered that Saudi Arabia exerted great pressure on the United Nations to organize and host the donor conference.
Al-Ajri said in press statements that the United Nations had erred in its response to Saudi pressure, and that the conference had turned into a "season for investing in the blood of Yemenis," adding that the United Nations, instead of putting pressure on what he described as aggressive countries to stop the war, was trying to give a human face to the war.
He continued that Saudi Arabia is trying, through organizing and hosting the donors conference, to present a new image of itself with a human face, after the deformation that it suffered, as he put it.
The Houthi leader also said that if there is an initiative, it must first include stopping what he described as the aggressive war on Yemen, as the natural entry point for any humanitarian effort that "aggression countries" might contribute to.
In the context, the Houthi spokesman, Muhammad Abd al-Salam, considered, in statements to the Al-Houthi channel, Al-Masirah, that the resort to organizing a conference of donors in light of the continuation of what he described as aggression and the siege, is an escape from the root of the problem.
And while Yemeni Prime Minister Moein Abdul Malik said - in a speech to him at the conference - that his country faces the crisis of the spread of the Corona virus in a critical economic situation and the lowest level of readiness for the medical sector, Abdul Aziz Jabbari, advisor to Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, demeaned the results of the donors conference, pointing to The grants resulting from such conferences are not visible on the ground.