Saudi Gazette report

ROME —The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has lauded Saudi Arabia’s contribution toward its efforts to support food needs of the most vulnerable groups in famine-risk Yemen.

According to the WFP, Saudi Arabia has contributed $858 million to WFP’s response in Yemen since 2018, including $380 million in 2019 that helped WFP scale-up operations to reach 13 million people — pulling the war-hit back from the brink of famine and saving lives.

In response to the recent contribution of $60 million made by Saudi Arabia through its charity arm the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief), WFP Executive Director David Beasley stressed that the humanitarian response to save lives in Yemen cannot continued without the Kingdom’s contribution.

The WFP chief made the remarks during the signing of the S60 million agreement with KSrelief’s Supervisor-General Abdullah Al-Rabeeah on the side-lines of the G20 development ministers meeting in Brindisi, southern Italy, last week.

“We are currently witnessing an alarming deterioration of the food security situation in Yemen that goes beyond any levels seen before, with 5 million people just a step away from famine”, said Beasley. “We are grateful to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for this urgently needed contribution to WFP’s life-saving operation, without which our large-scale and complex humanitarian response in the country cannot be sustained,” Beasley added.

With the contribution from Saudi Arabia through its aid arm, KSrelief, WFP will be able to close critical gaps in our life-saving food assistance program over the next few months, which supports a total of nearly 13 million people, the WFP chief pointed out.

WFP has increased food assistance in all famine-risk areas since the start of the year as additional funds have become available. Yet around 3 million people WFP supports are still receiving food assistance on alternate months as funding remains uncertain.

Around 50,000 people in Yemen are living in famine-like conditions, the first time such critical levels of hunger have been identified in two years. Over 16.2 million people are forecast to be living with acute levels of food insecurity (IPC3+) by mid-2021, requiring immediate humanitarian intervention to survive.