Yemen

With the holy month of Ramadan fast approaching, warring parties in Yemen must build on relative calm across the country and the April 2022 truce – which is largely holding, despite its official lapse in October – to negotiate a nationwide ceasefire and address the dire humanitarian needs there, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday.

UN-led efforts to prevent a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea took a major step forward on Thursday with the announcement of a deal to purchase a vessel that will remove more than a million barrels of oil from a decaying supertanker that has threatened the region for years. 

Donors are meeting in Geneva on Monday to raise $4.3 billion to provide support and protection for 17.3 million people in war-torn Yemen, which remains among the world’s most severe humanitarian crises. 

Some 21.6 million people in Yemen – that’s two-thirds of the population – are going to need some kind of humanitarian assistance and protection services during the course of 2023, according to the UN’s Humanitarian Response plan published on Wednesday.

The New Year holiday period witnessed a fresh surge of deadly attacks by Russian forces in Ukraine, Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told journalists on Tuesday. 

More than 11,000 boys and girls have been killed or injured in the war in Yemen - an average of four a day since fighting escalated in 2015, though the number is likely to be far higher, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported.

The torment being unleashed by Russia’s “senseless war”, on the people of Ukraine and beyond, is “colossal”, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Tuesday. 

Seven weeks since the UN-mediated nationwide truce in Yemen expired, the UN Special Envoy told the Security Council on Tuesday that despite “incidents of concern”, full-fledged war has not returned. 

Warring factions in Yemen are being urged to extend a UN-mediated truce following reports of deaths and injuries of civilians from sniper attacks and shelling. The truce, which started at the beginning of April, ended more than a month ago, and human rights chief, Volker Türk, says that there is grave and growing concern for the safety and security of civilians.

New uncertainty and “a heightened risk of war” now prevails across Yemen, following the end of a long truce which brought significant dividends, the UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg told the Security Council on Thursday.