June 3, 2012
(AFP)
DUBAI — The UAE on Sunday announced food aid worth 500 million dirhams
($136 million) for Yemen where aid groups say around 44 percent of the
population do not have enough to eat, state news agency WAM reported.
President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan "has approved
allocating 500 million dirhams to buy food and distribute it urgently to the
brotherly Yemeni people," WAM said.
The move is to "alleviate the suffering and ensure the availability
of basic needs" to enable Yemenis to achieve "better security,
stability and prosperity," said the statement.
The food items include "rice, sugar, cooking oil, baby milk, canned
food and other basic items of daily use," it said.
Last month, seven aid groups warned diplomats that Yemen was on the
brink of a "catastrophic food crisis."
At least 10 million people, some 44 percent of the population, do not
get "enough food to eat", they said, adding that one in three
children was "severely malnourished."
On May 21, the European Union unblocked an extra five million euros
($6.2 million) for Yemen to help fight mounting malnutrition in what it said
was a "desperate" food crisis affecting almost half of the
population.
The Commission has already mobilised 20 million euros ($24.9 million) in
humanitarian aid for Yemen this year, directed at increasing and improving
access to clean water, supporting feeding programmes, developing cash-for-work
schemes and providing cash grants for 200,000 people.
Deadly anti-regime protests swept Yemen last year, finally forcing
president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after 33 years in power.
The political crisis has left the country's economy in tatters and
aggravated the dire security situation, with Al-Qaeda militants launching a
wave of attacks in the mostly lawless south since Saleh's departure.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, with more than 40
percent of people living below the poverty line.
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