Senior UN officials have expressed concern over the potential impact of the decision by the United States to designate Yemen’s Anssarullah movement a terrorist group, The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), David Beasley said.
Briefing the online meeting, Beasley gave a blunt assessment of the prospects, stressing that the Yemeni famine is man-made, so Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries should bear their financial consequences and stop them immediately.
“We are struggling now without the designation. With the designation, it’s going to be catastrophic. It literally is going to be a death sentence to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people in Yemen,” he said.
“This designation, it needs to be re-assessed, it needs to be re-evaluated, and, quite frankly, it needs to be reversed.”
Beasley added that Yemen is among several countries facing famine, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these crises.
The WFP chief called for Gulf States “to pick up the humanitarian financial tab for this problem in Yemen”, and urged the Council and world leaders to apply pressure on the warring parties to end their fighting.
