TORONTO -- The United Nations has issued a new warning about starvation in Yemen, calling it one of the worst famines the world has seen where the level of suffering is so staggering the head of the World Food Program (WFP) says it is a "disgrace on humanity."
WFP Executive Director David Beasley recently visited Yemen and said he was horrified by what he saw.
"I'm standing here in this hospital room where this child, literally, is on the verge of death. In fact, 400,000 children are at risk of dying right now," Beasley told reporters on Wednesday.
"It's a horrible situation. It's a disgrace on humanity what’s happening here," he added.
In Yemen's capital, a young girl named Amadiya weighed just 11 kilograms (24 pounds) when she was admitted to an acute malnutrition ward in a Sana'a hospital for treatment. The girl’s mother said she is starving to death because the family does not have anything to eat.
After six years of war, blockades and sanctions, Beasley says some areas of Yemen are on the verge of extreme famine.
He explained that outside food aid budgets have been slashed and funding from the World Health Organization is drying up, leaving millions to go hungry.
Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland told CTV's Paul Workman the situation is affecting children the most.
"Famine is taking the lives of children today. I saw mothers who are too weak to breastfeed. Children who look like skeletons," he said.
Egeland recently visited five different provinces in Yemen, each of which he says have "tremendous needs" for aid.
He warns that the situation is growing more dire each day as the reduction in aid has led to food rations being cut in half.
"We need more funding, we need an end to the senseless war, and we need also a political solution to the problems of a place that is now totally paralyzed by the two sides fighting each other," Egeland said.
Egeland is not alone in his efforts. Other diplomats and groups are calling on Yemen's governments and coalitions for a "famine prevention ceasefire" to the war in an effort to help starving families.
The war in Yemen has also brought a fuel crisis with petrol being scarce and wood being stockpiled as a replacement for gas. However, Egeland says the horror of the crisis lies in Yemen’s hospitals where more starving children are arriving each day.
Egeland says 16 million people in Yemen need food aid to survive the next 12 months out of a population of roughly 30 million.
"At the moment, there are millions and millions and millions who are receiving nothing," Egeland said. "What they're receiving are bombs and crossfire and displacement."
He says it is "disheartening" to see organizations cut aid to Yemen in its time of need, and said Gulf countries as well as the U.S., U.K. and Canada need to do more.
"In our generation, we haven't been faced with this kind of humanitarian challenge before," Egeland said. The UN reports that Yemen is the largest famine since the Ethiopia hunger crisis in the 1980s.
However, Egeland says he is hopeful that the situation will eventually get better as some organizations, including his, work to scale up operations.
"We're not giving up, but short-term, I believe it will become worse before we turn the corner," Egeland said.
"But diplomats cannot stop before they have gotten this famine prevention ceasefire, and donors have to continue to produce this funding so we can feed the children of Yemen," he added.
