“People in Yemen continue to face a severe humanitarian and protection crisis,” said Joyce Msuya, interim chief of the United Nations’ humanitarian agency (OCHA), during a UN Security Council Briefing on Yemen on Wednesday.
“At least 19.5 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance and protection this year — 1.3 million more than in 2024,” she added.
On top of this, an estimated 4.8 million people remain internally displaced, the majority of whom are women and children.
Hans Grundberg, the United Nations Secretary General’s special envoy for Yemen, who briefed the UNSC following a recent visit to Sanaa, Riyadh, Tehran and Muscat, stressed the need for “immediate de-escalation and genuine engagement for peace.”
“The need to address Yemen’s crisis becomes ever more urgent as regional stability requires, in part, achieving peace in Yemen,” he said.
Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthi rebels forced the internationally recognized government out of Sanaa and seized population centers in the north.
A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December 2023 the warring parties committed to a peace process.