Yemen conflict leaves 2.4 million forcibly displaced

After almost one year of renewed conflict in Yemen, more than 2.4 million people are forcibly displaced by the fighting, some of them in hard-to-reach areas where they face deteriorating conditions in the absence of a political settlement, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warned.

The figure of 2,430,178 internally displaced people in Yemen appears in the latest report of a special Task Force on Population Movement in Yemen, which is led jointly by UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, as part of the humanitarian response to the Yemen crisis, which escalated in late March 2015.

Although down slightly from the 2.5 million displaced people reported by the last task force report, in December – due to an improved methodology and the return home of some displaced people in the south – the number of people displaced within Yemen remains staggeringly high and a cause for grave alarm.

“The figures also mask the human face of the conflict and the continuing suffering and growing needs,” UNHCR spokesperson Leo Dobbs told a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday (March 8). “The situation is likely to get worse amid increasingly dire humanitarian and socio-economic conditions and with no political settlement in sight.”

The Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan, launched in Geneva last month, seeks US$1.8 billion for more than 100 humanitarian partners to provide critical and life-saving assistance to 13.6 million people in need. It is currently just 2 per cent funded.

Read the full article on the UNHCR website