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The Humanitarian Disaster in Yemen

Yemen needs an end to the blockade and a prolonged cease-fire.
yemen school

The death toll from the bombing campaign in Yemen continues to rise:

Saudi-led coalition air strikes and clashes killed at least 176 fighters and civilians in Yemen on Monday, residents and media run by the Houthi movement said, the highest daily toll since the Arab air offensive began more than three months ago.

The United Nations has been pushing for a halt to air raids and intensified fighting that began on March 26. More than 3,000 people have been killed since then as the Arab coalition tries stop the Houthis spreading across the country from the north.

Another humanitarian “pause” would be welcome news, but like the last one it will have little effect on the country’s woes if the blockade remains in place and the bombing campaign resumes a few days later. These latest strikes have made it that much harder to get the belligerents to agree to a brief cease-fire, so it is unclear whether the “pause” will happen at all. The needs of Yemeni civilians have only grown more acute since the last “pause” in May, and there are now over a million people displaced inside Yemen, so a few days’ halt to the fighting will be insufficient to bring in and distribute the aid that the civilian population requires. Yemen needs an end to the blockade and a prolonged cease-fire if the humanitarian crisis is to be properly addressed.

Unfortunately, the prospect of resolving the conflict through diplomatic channels seems more remote than ever. The warring parties appear to have no interest in compromising, and there seems to be no pressure from Washington on its clients to get them to call off the attack. At the end of a Wall Street Journal report on the Obama administration’s plans for addressing regional conflicts following a nuclear deal with Iran, Yemen’s war is included as an afterthought. The report states that “White House officials are also considering ways to work with Tehran toward a diplomatic resolution,” but says nothing about ending or curtailing U.S. aid for the war.

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