The Gulf country is distributing food baskets and has launched 32 drinking water projects

Emirates intensifies its humanitarian aid programmes in Yemen and the Red Sea

photo_camera PHOTO/WAM - United Arab Emirates sends food and relief assistance to Yemeni families

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), through its humanitarian agency, the Red Crescent, is stepping up its assistance programmes in Yemen, which currently has the world's largest humanitarian crisis with 24 million people in need of urgent humanitarian aid. The organization has distributed 300 food baskets to 2,100 displaced families in Al-Hudeida governorate, according to the Emirati news agency WAM. The director of the region's human rights office, Fathia Al Ma'amari, thanked the Gulf country for its "great efforts to reach out to groups in need and help alleviate their suffering from the hunger crisis that is hitting the Yemeni coast of the Red Sea.

In this area, the Emirates has also launched 32 clean water projects in the last week, "to help Yemenis benefit from food aid, shelter, social services and sustainable development," according to Middle East Online. These projects will benefit more than 600,000 people, according to WAM, over a three-year period. They include the restoration and drilling of 23 drinking water wells in remote villages. The Red Crescent also supplies electricity to the wells to pump water and provide solar energy systems. 

The Emirati humanitarian agency "aims to restore, maintain and build strategic central water projects in many populated areas, which were well received by local residents," WAM reported.

Already two weeks ago, the Emirates Red Crescent contributed to the restoration of 24 fishing centres on the Yemeni Red Sea coast, a project that benefited 28,000 fishermen providing food to more than 220,000 people. 

The situation in Yemen and the Red Sea basin has worsened in recent times with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The health system in the Asian country had already collapsed before the arrival of COVID-19, as a result of an open war between Hutu militias and the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, supported by the Arab Coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

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