1 million Yemenis to benefit under UN five-year food programme

One million Yemenis will benefit from a new five-year $48-million programme signed with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to help reduce poverty, cut malnutrition and narrow the gender gap in education.

“Food insecurity has reached crisis proportions in Yemen and over 50 per cent of children under five are malnourished,” WFP Representative Mohamed El-Kouhene said at the signing ceremony yesterday in Sana’a. “WFP, in partnership with the Yemeni government and other UN agencies, will do its utmost effort to reduce these levels.”

The new Country Programme for the period 2007-2011 will focus on expanding girls’ access to education and improving the health and nutritional status of malnourished children under five, pregnant and lactating women, and tuberculosis and leprosy patients.

Scarce natural resources, combined with one of the highest population growth rates in the world, have contributed to Yemen’s economic difficulties. Over 40 per cent of the population of some 21 million live on less than $2 per day and over 70 per cent live in rural areas, where stagnating agricultural production has led to severe poverty and high unemployment.

One of WFP’s activities under the project will be providing food rations as an incentive to encourage families to enrol their children, especially girls, in primary schools. It will also be expanded to include girls in secondary education. “Girls’ education is as essential as it is for boys. They are at least half the future of this country as active members of the society who will ensure that the country can move forward,” Mr. El-Kouhene said.

Gender inequality in education is a problem especially evident in primary schools where the enrolment rate for girls is 61 per cent compared to 86 per cent for boys. The illiteracy rate for girls over 15 has peaked at 71.5 per cent.

“Donors have been supportive to WFP’s operations in Yemen,” Mr. El-Kouhene said. “With a new project focusing exclusively on women and girls, adequate resources would help us work with the government to make a real change in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.”

WFP has provided $400 million of food aid to Yemen since 1967, when the country was split into the Yemen Arab Republic and the South People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

Planning and International Cooperation Minister Abdulkarim Al-Arhabi signed the agreement for the Yemeni Government.