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While international attention has focused on the Iranian conflict and its regional ramifications, Yemen’s devastating crisis has received little attention. The people of Yemen are suffering from hunger. By early 2026, 18 million people, more than half of the population, are expected to face worsening levels of food insecurity. To grasp the scale of this crisis, imagine the entire population of the Netherlands starving.
In a survey conducted by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) last year, nearly all respondents cited food as their most urgent need, with almost 80% of families reporting severe hunger. These are not isolated hardships, but broader realities that shape daily survival across communities.
Our findings reflect the latest forecasts from the Integrated Food Security Tier Classification (IPC), which warns that an additional 1 million people are now at risk of life-threatening hunger and are classified in IPC Tier 3+. IPC Phase 3 and beyond means families routinely miss meals, rely on debt, and sell what little remains, such as jewelry, livestock, tools, and even doors and cooking gas cylinders, to buy food. It also means children are more likely to become acutely malnourished, and diseases that would normally save them can become fatal.
Even more worrying, famine outbreaks affecting more than 40,000 people are expected to occur in four districts within the next two months, making Yemen’s food security outlook bleakest since 2022. For many families, food consists of a daily ration of bread and water. Also, some adults do not eat their meals so that their children can.
Health facilities are witnessing the consequences of children becoming dangerously weak from malnutrition, and nursing mothers themselves undernourished and doing everything in their power to feed their babies.
In these situations, hunger is not just a lack of food, but also a state in which the body steadily shuts down. Parents may need to roll out a little flour into a flatbread or dilute lentils with water until it’s almost a soup. These coping mechanisms are now common in the communities we visited. There, families survive on one meal a day because of rising prices and reduced incomes.
Yemen has historically produced only a small portion of its own food and relies on imports for approximately 80 to 90 percent of its staple grains. Structural vulnerabilities exacerbated by years of conflict and economic contraction. The fighting has reduced the ability of many people to cultivate their land or raise livestock, forced rural families to flee their fields, and disrupted supply chains for fuel, fertilizer and seeds.
Unusual rainfall and high temperatures associated with climate change are further reducing agricultural productivity. Even during rainy seasons, families report that water scarcity and soil degradation make farming a gamble, and without security and market functioning, local production cannot meet needs.
Yemen has been teetering on the precipice for too long. But what makes this moment different, and more dangerous, is that humanitarian funding, which once served as a fragile guardrail against catastrophe, has been drastically cut. Accelerating economic collapse, combined with aid cuts, climate shocks and renewed military escalation, is now pushing millions of people into irreversible crisis.
By the end of 2025, funding for humanitarian assistance in Yemen will be less than 25%, the lowest funding level in a decade. Lifesaving nutrition assistance received only 10 percent of the funding needed to help those in need.
At the International Rescue Committee, we have seen firsthand that the effects of aid cuts are immediate and devastating. With critical nutrition services suspended, the number of people reached has been cut by more than half. Nutrition therapy centers and clinics were closed, and admissions to medical centers for severe acute malnutrition decreased. It’s not because there are fewer children in need of support, it’s simply because there is no longer a place for them to receive treatment.
A full-scale food security crisis in Yemen is not inevitable, and the priority actions needed to change direction are clear.
To help Yemeni families become self-sufficient, donors must first urgently restore and scale up integrated funding for food security and nutrition in the hardest-hit areas. Second, funding should prioritize nutritional treatment for children and pregnant and lactating women, including an uninterrupted supply of ready-to-use therapeutic foods.
Yemen also needs support in building a shared system to track food availability and population nutrition to identify potential hotspots early and allow humanitarian workers to respond quickly and in a coordinated manner.
Immediate, targeted donation efforts and investment in proven humanitarian solutions, such as targeted cash assistance to families at risk of malnutrition, can prevent widespread loss of life this year and help communities begin to truly recover. It is not too late to avoid even greater tragedies.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
