In Yemen, funding cuts force us to classify the vulnerable

Millions of vulnerable Yemenis are unlikely to receive aid this year.

As a veteran aid worker, I have seen some of the world’s worst conflicts and disasters. But I have rarely witnessed a situation as serious as that in Yemen, where two thirds of the population need help. The recent Yemen humanitarian crisis pledging conference was a sobering reminder of how far we are from being able to adequately support the Yemeni people, who have been brought to their knees after eight years of conflict. It also sends a signal that some lives are less valuable than others.

Baheyah Abdu comes to mind. The 40-year-old mother of 10 has been displaced for the full eight years of this crisis, fighting for basic services in a makeshift camp in the southern city of Taiz. With sky-high prices, her husband’s daily wage of less than $1 now only buys bread and sometimes tomatoes for her family.

Late last year, funding gaps meant that little help they received stopped, forcing her to stop sending her children to school and unable to pay for medical care. Baheyah is now left alone. Like millions of other Yemenis, she is unlikely to receive help this year.

The numbers speak for themselves: barely a quarter of the $4.3 billion needed for humanitarian response has been pledged this year and less than 5 percent has actually been provided. This means that aid organizations are forced to classify the vulnerable in an emergency room of despair. This is unacceptable, and we must denounce the countries responsible for this deadly funding gap.

Many of the countries that have been directly or indirectly involved in this war through bombing, fighting, or arms sales have promised less funding than before, and some nothing at all: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. We are also disappointed that those who voluntarily provided weapons in this terrible war – the United States, the United Kingdom and other European nations – did not give more. In the years when the conflict for which they provided the tools was taking its toll and tearing at the social fabric of the country, financing was relatively easy. Now that global interest in Yemen has dimmed, the key players in the war that caused the suffering are cutting funding and appearing to turn their backs.

This oversight comes at a crucial time for Yemen, when the warring parties are in the midst of truce negotiations. Thus, the world powers are sending the completely wrong message at a critical moment when we all could and should give Yemen the last push towards an end to the conflict and lasting stability.

We will not sit idly by and let them go unnoticed.

Nations that were willing to provide billions to wage war are now committing Yemen’s most vulnerable to another year of suffering, another year without enough food on their plates, without the support they need to live a dignified life. This is not a problem of finite resources; It is political will.

My colleagues at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen will continue to reach out to people in need and document the impact of funding cuts on families terrified of not receiving help. We will make it clear that funding cuts now force us to make impossible decisions about which vulnerable children to help and which to remove from our list.

Eight years of this man-made disaster should have brought us to a tipping point of hope. While the fragile ceasefire has yet to be extended, the relative calm across the country helped us all to believe that the end of this nightmare was near. Now we don’t know if the most vulnerable will survive starvation as funds begin to dry up.

Baheyah hopes her voice will be heard by regional and world leaders who have apparently left Yemen. We want her and millions of her Yemeni compatriots to know that we will not leave them behind.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.