The word “WAR” means a lot to us in Yemen. It is linked, in our mind, to many tragedies, pains, and various forms of implications and effects that have turned our life into a nightmare.
Since our theme revolves around children and future, my talk will be centered around the war my country, Yemen, has suffered and still suffering from. The war acts as a devastation machine whose effects do not stop at undermining the entire society, but extend also to destroy its present and future, and then children are the most affected.
Just a few weeks ago, ten children died in a hospital in the city of Sana'a as a result of receiving doses of expired treatments, while the survivors are still suffering from the consequences. All these children have received treatment for cancer under very poor health conditions, especially after eight years of war. This is just a picture of what is experienced by the children in Yemen. The Houthi militia bears the responsibility for negligence, as it’s not enough to lay full blame on the blockade on Yemen and on the resulting medicine shortages.
In various Yemeni cities during the war years, a series of effects have affected the children and their lives. Population centers and civilian facilities of these cities were subjected to air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition and to artillery shells by the militias. Thousands of children have been killed as a result of direct targeting of residential areas, and other tens of thousands and their families have fled for safety to other areas, some of which are lacking in basics of life.
In the city of Taiz, the most suffering and besieged for eight years, sniper operations and targeting residential neighborhoods have not stopped, which has resulted in thousands of deaths among children and civilians in general, not to mention those who were killed during hostilities and war escalation. In fact, time is not enough to show all the atrocities and violations against children in Yemen as a result of the war. The effects of war are not limited to direct casualties, since all aspects of life have been affected and collapsed or destroyed.
A war destroys the present, and makes children face an uncertain future. Shocking horrors and tragedies due to wars and civil and armed conflicts create an environment where children in particular are most affected. Shelling, sniping, hitting residential areas, displacement, lack of food, collapse of educational and health institutions are concrete examples for the life the children in areas of war and violent conflict are living.
The collapse of education in Yemen as a result of the war takes many tangible and intangible manifestations. Education has stopped for years, more than two million children have dropped out of schools, and thousands of families have been unable to provide education for children in other areas escaping the fires of war. Educational institutions have been destroyed. Even those who had the opportunity to go to school in the areas under the control of the militia have fallen victim to forced recruitment and extremist ideas. The militia has made changes to education curricula, and turned schools into centers to spread the culture of violence and hatred and mobilize against everyone outside the circle militia and its culture.
The summer camps have been misused to spread extremism and recruit children and throw them into battlefronts. International organizations have reported information about thousands of child soldiers killed on the war ground, while others were captured and only a small number of them received rehabilitation sessions before being released in prisoner exchanges. Hence, children in general will be the most in need of rehabilitation in the post-war period, but not only those who were recruited or revolved in the war.
Millions of children in Yemen exist in areas experiencing armed confrontations and hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced. The state collapse has led Yemeni children to live in cities where state services, including health and education services, have collapsed, and under conditions where state employees are not paid, further complicating the living situation of the children's families and making them unable to meet even their minimum basic needs.
The militias prevent access of aid to cities, and limit aid distribution to those loyal to them. Due to difficult living conditions and livelihood challenges, the situation in Yemen is today described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and then children will be most affected. Going through the difficulty of life before maturity and before being armed with the necessary knowledge and professional skills deepens the suffering of children in Yemen. In other words, the humanitarian crisis can be said to be a crisis that affects children more than others.
The war and the state collapse are throwing millions of children in Yemen into the open to face their fate, without any protection. UN and international initiatives to protect children from the effects of war and armed conflicts and to provide aid, nutrition and health care for children, particularly the displaced, are not a sustainable solution. In times of state collapses, wars and starvation, however, such initiatives remain an international humanitarian duty.
Efforts to stop conflicts, restore stability, and establish the rule of law are essentially required to protect children and their communities alike, and here the humanitarian aspect comes to complement such efforts and not as a substitute for them, and vice versa.
In order to effectively support the humanitarian and health relief programs in Yemen and to provide food and medicine to large groups of the population in need of assistance, especially children, wide pressure is still needed on the armed groups to ensure operational independence of international organizations working in Yemen. Our experience in Yemen reveals a lot about such challenges.
The world has contributed to alleviating the suffering of Yemenis from the implications of the war and the state collapse. However, the militias’ control over the outputs of the activities of international organizations in the conflict areas under their control has greatly limited the work of these organizations and exploited a large part of these outputs in favor of these dominant militias’ agendas. Rather, they have become part of their resources.
The deadlock of finding a solution to end the war and restoring the state in Yemen should not prevent the international community from exerting real pressure on the militias to allow international relief efforts operate in an independent manner that enables the access to the affected, the needy and the population groups suffering from war and conflict.
When international humanitarian organizations working in the field of food, health and education in Yemen carry out their activities according to the wishes of the militias with effective control on the ground, this means that a large part of the international support goes to the militias that impose an oppressive grip on densely populated areas inhabited by millions of children suffering from the war effects.
The systematic and increasing restrictions by these militias on the work of international organizations deprive large segments of the population of benefiting from food, medicine and humanitarian aid. The war and the state collapse remain the cause of all evils, and in no case can the militias be a substitute for the kidnapped State.
We want the world to help us to restore our State and stability. With the crises of food, education, health and insecurity under the absence of the state and stability, the suffering of children, their families and communities will continue, and the number of children affected by the war in Yemen will increase. Providing protection for children in times of war and mitigating its effects on them is a priority for us, and not a marginal matter.
Children are our societies’ future. And if the child care and protection and provision of aid for children to overcome the war effects don’t become our primary objectives at both the local and international level, this future will be unknown and something like the ruins left by wars and armed conflicts.
The world, most of whose members have signed the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of the Child and the international conventions on the rights of children, must fulfill its responsibility towards children.