Opinion: The international community must not abandon Yemen

I spent my childhood in Hodeida, Yemen’s largest port city on the shore of the Red Sea, which is famous for its lively markets.  I still have such fond memories of my school, my friends, and all the happy times there.

Today, the place has changed beyond recognition.

It is no longer the safe and welcoming town where I grew up. Seven years of war have left their ugly mark on everything. There are checkpoints everywhere, restricting people’s movement. Poverty-stricken women and children are begging in the streets. Lines for fuel and food stretch for miles. Everyone is hungry and tired.

Children are the most affected. I meet children every day at the clinic where I work and in the villages where we bring medicine. When I ask children what they want to be in the future, they say, “I just want to eat and live.” They are terrified of dying.

At school, they hear teachers read out the names of all the children who have died — their friends and fellow pupils. They discuss death all the time, and it is very traumatic for them.

It is not like the childhood that I remember. The war has robbed this generation of their childhood.

Across Yemen, 2.3 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from malnutrition. Every day in our clinic, we treat children on the verge of starvation, and they keep coming back because of poverty, as their families cannot afford enough food.

It is a vicious circle. War and poverty cause hunger, and malnutrition affects the rest of children’s health and development. One Yemeni child now dies every 10 minutes because of illnesses that could and should be prevented.

The sad reality is that many of these conditions can be treated easily at an early stage, but parents are too poor to seek medical help.

Recently, I met a woman who came to our clinic to collect medication for her children. I noticed that her eyes were yellow, which could indicate a liver problem. When I asked her about it, she told me that she was diagnosed with cirrhosis but did not have enough money to buy medicine.

She is a single mother of four, and two of her children suffer from severe malnutrition. Whenever she gets money, she uses it to buy food for her family. She told me that she could tolerate the physical pain of her own illness but could not bear to see her children suffer. Her husband had left Hodeida to look for work and never returned. It broke my heart, and I contacted my family to send her the medicines.

There are many women like her in Hodeida: single mothers who were left to fend for themselves and their children. Men left after the war started to look for jobs in other regions and countries, and their families never heard from them again. Some may have died in the war.

We have recently seen an increase in the number of children in dialysis centers. This is particularly concerning since kidney diseases were not common among children previously. From our research in the clinics, much of the increase can be attributed to anemia, which can be brought on by a lack of adequate food and nutrition.

In the past few years, Hodeida has been crippled by fuel shortages, which have paralyzed life in the city and also contributed to children’s poor health. Water pumps and systems stop working, so they have no choice but to drink contaminated water. People stand in line for hours every day to get a few liters of fuel — and even then, whatever they manage to get is not enough.

Electricity is a luxury. We get electricity for a few hours every two weeks. It is hard to run clinics, hospitals, and schools when there is no electricity and the temperatures can reach over 100 degrees.

Growing up in Hodeida, I never imagined that people here would be forced to live such a primitive life. But years of war have caused suffering that I struggle to comprehend, even though I see it every day.

At a time when people are in such a desperate situation, it was hugely disappointing to see some international governments reduce their aid at a pledging conference for Yemen last month. Less than one-third of what’s needed was committed, and lives will be at risk as a result.

It is good to see the world coming together with such humanity over the crisis in Ukraine, but we hope for the same here. International aid has saved many lives in Yemen and it will be a tragedy if that does not continue. We need the international community to commit funding so that vital food aid and health care can continue, but also to ensure independent monitoring and accountability for the ongoing attacks, as well as increase diplomatic efforts to end this conflict and help Yemen back to economic stability.

For the sake of the country that I love, I pray that the war ends soon. I hope the international community will help the children of Yemen to have the kind of childhood they deserve.