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Archives for October 16, 2025

Yemen’s Escalating Hunger Crisis: Nearly Half the Population Struggles to Find Enough Food

Recent data reveals that Yemen is now the world’s third biggest food crisis,[1] with half of its population facing hunger, and nearly half of all children under five suffering from chronic malnutrition.[2] On World Food Day, international and national organizations in Yemen are calling for urgent action to address the escalating hunger crisis in the country.

Yemen is facing an alarming humanitarian emergency, with an increasing number of people deprived of food and one in three families facing moderate to severe hunger. Over 100 districts now face a critical nutrition emergency, an unprecedented increase in malnutrition levels across the country.[3] In Abs District, Hajjah, children have died of starvation as malnutrition rates soared, while in Al Hodeida and Taiz, a projected 15 – 30 percent rise in acute malnutrition is expected by the end of the year.[4]

The situation is rapidly deteriorating. By early 2026, over 18 million people across Yemen are expected to face crisis levels of hunger, including approximately 41,000 at risk of famine.[5]

Across the country, families are now being driven into impossible choices — parents are skipping meals so their children can eat, selling off land, livestock, or their few belongings just to survive. As a mother from Al Dhale’ shared: “There are days when I send my daughter to her grandfather’s house just so she can eat, while I go without. On other days, we eat just bread and drink tea. As a mother, it breaks me.”

The impacts of the current crisis are intergenerational. Children are among the hardest hit — losing not only their health, as hunger robs them of their physical and cognitive development, increasing lifelong health risks, but also their hopes for the future. As families struggle to survive, many have been forced to take their children out of school, send them to work, or marry them off early, exposing them to further risks.

DRIVING FACTORS

Conflict, economic collapse, climate shocks and water scarcity are pushing Yemen towards famine. Years of war and displacement have eroded livelihoods, limiting access to basic health and nutrition services. As is more often the case, women and girls have been disproportionately affected. Now recovery efforts are stalling with rising food prices, currency devaluation and economic fragmentation pushing millions deeper into crisis. The latest floods this August are a stark example of how climate change is limiting the availability of food, destroying farmland, livestock, and other essential sources of sustenance.

While conditions are challenging across Yemen, in northern governorates, the ongoing detention of humanitarian staff has further obstructed lifesaving aid operations. The restriction of movement imposed on female Yemeni aid workers, which prevents them from travelling without male guardians, also continues to impede humanitarian delivery and limits the ability of vulnerable women and girls to access humanitarian services.

Unprecedented global aid cuts in 2025 have further driven hunger and child malnutrition to deadly levels.[6] Funding cuts have forced the shutdown of over 2,800 lifesaving treatment services, representing nearly half of all lifesaving nutrition programming.[7] Nearly all supply pipelines, which serve millions of malnourished children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, are under severe strain. Despite rising needs, Yemen’s food security and nutrition responses are at its lowest in a decade, with barely 10 percent of funding needs met.[8]

Taking Effective Solutions Further

Over the past decade, international and local organizations in Yemen have helped prevent famine from taking hold and saved countless lives. With the support of donors we have restored irrigation systems, provided cash assistance and vocational training to help families rebuild their livelihoods. These efforts have kept children nourished, supported parents to earn an income, and revived small-scale farming. However, without sustained, long-term investment, the tide will turn. More districts are at imminent risk of sliding into catastrophic levels of malnutrition [9] without urgent funding and supplies.

Donors Must Step Up

As the world marks World Food Day, the international community must scale up support for proven solutions to allow humanitarian actors to tackle Yemen’s worsening hunger crisis, protect children and families and prevent increased suffering. Equally important is addressing the root causes of Yemen’s food insecurity: an end to the conflict which requires meaningful progress in the peace process and robust recovery efforts, including stabilization of the economy and investments in climate resilient agriculture and livelihoods. Only through a combined effort — linking immediate life-saving support with long-term political and economic solutions — can Yemenis rebuild their lives.

We call on:

  • Donors and international partners to fund immediate food security and livelihood needs identified in the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster hyper-prioritized plan,[10] with a focus on hotspot districts and the restoration of critical supply pipelines. Support will enable lifesaving nutrition services, including the continued operation of therapeutic feeding centers and access to essential treatment supplies.

  • Donors and international partners to increase investment in national organizations as a critical effort towards advancing the localization agenda, while ensuring communities are supported faster and more effectively.

  • Donors and international partners to jointly advocate for principled humanitarian access across Yemen, facilitating the timely delivery of targeted and complementary food, nutrition and cash assistance.

  • Donors and international partners to urgently ensure that humanitarian programs across Yemen integrate measures to safeguard vulnerable communities, particularly women and children, addressing the rising risks they face due to the escalating hunger crisis, including forced child labor, early marriage, and school dropout

  • Development donors to invest in robust disaster risk management strategies. Resilient infrastructure and community preparedness initiatives, including social transfers, are critical to minimize risks of climate change and protect the most vulnerable populations.

  • Parties to the conflict must facilitate principled and unhindered humanitarian access to ensure the timely delivery of lifesaving assistance, and the recovery of their communities from severe hunger and malnutrition. All arbitrarily detained humanitarian workers should be released, and the safety and continuity of humanitarian operations should be ensured.

  • Parties to the conflict, with the support of the international community, to take steps towards peace efforts including economic relief measures – such as resuming public sector salary payments, restoring banking operations, and curbing currency depreciation – to reduce the drivers of hunger and enable families to afford food and basic needs.

Signed by:

Action Contre la Faim (ACF) Action for Humanity
Aden Foundation for Arts and Sciences (ADEN-FAS) Al-Ahlam Foundation for Developmental Medicine
All Girls Foundation For Development (AGF)
Al-Nabras Foundation for Human Development Altwasul for Human Development
CARE
Child and Youth Protection Foundation (CYPF) Center For Civilians In Conflict (CIVIC)
Danish Refugee Council (DRC) Deem for Development Organization Direct Aid (DA)
Dorcas
FARHM Network for Peace and Development (network of 10 Yemeni organizations) Field Medical
Foundation (FMF)
For Human Development Foundation (FHD) Generations Without Qat (GWQ)
Geneva Call
Human Access for Partnership and Development International Medical Corps
International Rescue Committee (IRC) INTERSOS
Joud Al Ata a Foundation Humanity Development (JAFHD) Médecins du Monde (MdM)
Medglobal
Mona Relief and Development Organization (Mona Relief)
Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA)
OXFAM
Relief & Development Peer Foundation (RDP) Relief International (RI)
Save the Children
Secours Islamique France (SIF)
Society for Humanitarian Solidarity (SHS) Solidarités International (SI)
SOUL for Development (SOUL)
War Child Alliance

—

*[1]. Mr. Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator – Briefing to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Yemen, 15 September 2025 | OCHA
[2] Approximately 18.1 million people are facing hunger and 49% of children under 5 are facing chronic malnutrition, Nutrition Cluster, Oct 2025.
[3] Nutrition Cluster, Oct 2025.
[4] Nutrition Cluster, Oct 2025.
[5] Food insecurity levels are based on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), where Phase 3 indicates crisis levels of food insecurity and Phase 5 indicates catastrophic or famine conditions. IPC projects Phase [5] (Catastrophic) conditions in four districts within Amran, Al Hodeidah and Hajjah governorates.
[6] IPC projections from Sept 2025 – Feb 2026 mark a record-high number of areas classified in Phase 4 (Emergency).
[7] 377 Outpatient Therapeutic Program (OTP) sites, 2,376 Targeted Supplementary Feeding Program (TSFP) sites, 77 mobile teams, and 21 Therapeutic Feeding Centers (TFCs) have closed due to a shortfall in funds (Nutrition Cluster, Oct 2025).
[8] Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025. https://fts.unocha.org/plans/1262/global-clusters.
[9] IPC Acute Malnutrition (AMN) Phase 5.
[10] Yemen Food Security and Agriculture hyper-prioritized response plan, July- Dec 2025. https://fscluster.org/yemen/document/yemen-fsac-hyper-prioritized-response.

Notes to Editors

  • Data from assessments conducted in Taiz, Al Dhae’e, Abyan and Al Hodiedah in August 2025, reveal that half of all households with children under five had at least one malnourished child during the last three months, while 1 in 4 households had at least one malnourished pregnant or lactating woman (PLW) during the same period.

  • Malnourished children are about ten times more likely to die from common illnesses than well-nourished children, leaving them at risk of stunting—a form of chronic malnutrition that impairs normal physical and cognitive development—along with irreversible developmental delays, lifelong health struggles, and diminished prospects for the future. Without treatment, their bodies enter full starvation, breaking down protein—the essential tissue needed for survival—until they slowly and painfully die. Yemen’s future generation is at risk, and assistance must reach them as soon as possible. 

Contact information

For more details, please contact: media@oxfam.org.nz

25 years on from UN pledge, local women’s rights organisations and peacebuilders get just 0.1% of aid as donors pour billions into arms

The same governments that pledged support in 2000 to the UN’s flagship resolution on “Women, Peace and Security” (WPS) have since spent 25 years paying it lip-service, according to a new Oxfam report today that reviews its progress.

The report called “Beyond Rhetoric” shows that while military spending has risen by $1.5 trillion in 84 countries in 2024, aid for gender equality and peace fell by 7.1%. Women’s organizations are now getting less than half a cent of every dollar of aid.

Amina Hersi, Oxfam’s Head of Gender, Rights and Justice, said: “Feminist-led peace hasn’t failed – it has been betrayed”.

“A generation after world leaders promised women a seat at the table, the same powerful states that authored the blueprint have simply not backed it properly. Women peacebuilders are being left to nurture shattered communities, shouldering most of the responsibility but without enough political space or financial backing to do so.”

Oxfam warns that promises made toward securing women’s leadership in peace and security building are collapsing.

Case studies from Colombia, the DRC, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and South Sudan find that national action plans remain mostly empty pledges, even as rising militarization means that important women rights actors and peacebuilders become further sidelined.

NATO members alone have increased defence spending by $159 billion over the past decade, while global funding for gender-responsive peace has flatlined and is now in freefall.

The same NATO powers touting feminist foreign policies and National Action Plans on WPS —including Canada, the US, the UK and France — along with the UN Security Council, have largely failed to act in the face of atrocities in the DRC, the OPT, South Sudan and beyond.

Funding for global gender, conflict, peace and security aid only accounts for just 2.6 per cent ($7.5 billion) of total ODA ($289 billion). Of the $148 million in global gender, peace and security aid that went to women’s rights in 2023, only $4.7 million – 3.1% – actually reached local women rights organisations. More starkly, between 2014 and 2023, just 0.1 per cent of overall ODA reached women’s rights and women-led organisations directly; while cuts in 2025 threaten to close almost half of such organisations in crisis settings within months.

Attacks on women and girls during conflicts have soared. Verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence rose by 50% in 2023 while the incidence of grave violations against girls increased 35%. The report also highlights:

  • In Colombia, over 180 women human rights defenders were killed in 2023 alone, and the gender provisions in its own peace accord remain among the least implemented.

  • In DRC, only 13% of parliamentary seats are held by women, and there is evidence of high levels of conflict related sexual and gender-based violence and displacement fuelled by mineral extraction and widespread militarisation and conflict.

  • In OPT, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violent repression in the West Bank, on top of decades of illegal occupation, has resulted in severe violations of the rights and lives of women. These violations include sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by Israeli forces, as well as restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities, such as military checkpoints and the destruction of health infrastructure, that have denied women access to essential reproductive healthcare and violated their reproductive rights.

  • In South Sudan, women’s 35% political quota has not translated into genuine influence, amid repression and pervasive sexual and gender-based violence used as a weapon of war.  

“Feminist peace is a political imperative, not an optional extra. Unless governments change course now, the WPS agenda will be remembered as just another broken promise,” said Hersi.

“The real contribution of the WPS agenda is not only about including women in peace processes, but instead a fundamental challenge to transform unequal power structures. This is a process that continues to be led from the ground by feminist actors, often at great personal risk.”

Following the UN Security Council’s Annual Open Debate on Women Peace and Security, Oxfam is calling for member states to deliver a radical reset and redirect some of their military spending toward peacebuilding.

They should guarantee that at least half of WPS funding goes directly to grassroots women’s rights organisations. They should also do more to enforce accountability for those responsible for genocide, war crimes and sexual and gender-based violence.

“The WPS agenda remains an essential tool for women peacebuilders, women’s rights and feminist actors,” Hersi said.

“Whether it survives as a force for justice depends on the global community backing its principles with the resources and political will to make that potential real. Without this happening, the 25th anniversary of the UN Resolution on Women, Peace and Security will be a mark of its decline, not its maturity.”

Notes to the editor

Contact information:

Rachel Schaevitz, Head of Communications, Media & Advocacy: media@oxfam.org.nz