The Yemen crisis has had a long standing implication on the lives of Yemenis who are having difficulty in even ensuring that their children don’t starve to death. It’s time for world politics to take charge of the situation and enable Yemenis to lead a better life.
Editorial Staff
Imagine what it must feel like to live in a country that has been at war for more than three years? Yemen has been at war for the last war and the horrific statistics that emerges from Yemen every day is bound to get any sensible person thinking about the futile fact of war and the implications that it leaves on the lives of innocent people.
The horrifying statistics that emerges from Yemen shows that more than 57,000 people have been killed in Yemen so far. There are 14 million people in Yemen who have the risk of famine while 10,000 new cholera cases are recorded each week. What makes the situation even grimmer is the fact that not even the children of Yemen are allowed to have a happy childhood.
How can the children lead a happy childhood when their parents, their communities are all suffering? It is paradoxical that while Yemen is in the war hit situation for the last three years, the large part of the global community is not asserting adequate pressure on the international players to restore peace and allow Yemen to live in peace. A report by Save the Children estimated that 85,000 children below the age of five years have already starved to death in the country. This means that on average 77 children in Yemen die on a single day because of situations that can’t be avoided.
Imagine, had a similar tragedy touched any part of Europe or America, would the global community and international media not have paid more attention? It is ironic that while the headlines never have the pain of the Yemenis people to share and instead opt for sensational news or political events that shape the affairs in the powerful and dominant players in world politics like Britain, France and America.
The story of Yemen is clouded in the international community’s choice of indifference and manipulation combined with self-interest. Even at the G-20 World Summit where the leaders did discuss the Yemen crisis, it appeared more like lip-service than a careful and strong decision making upon the theme. It is true that Yemen is limited in terms of the importance that the global players assign to it whether as a strategic location or for economic development.
It is an irony that for all the parties that surround Yemen, it has to be used for immediate gains without assigning any importance to the people who live in Yemen. Formerly colonial regimes Turkey and Britain say that they owe nothing to Yemen and do not want to contribute to building of peace there, the next door neighbor of Yemen Saudi Arabia sees it as nothing beyond a battleground in the area for a wide proxy war that it is engaged in with Iran.
For many nations, Yemen is a market for arms. Each contender is putting their profits before the people of Yemen itself and this implies that the people become their last resort and not priorities. It is not impossible to figure out that the world community isn’t doing adequately to ensure that peace be restored in Yemen. Many neighboring nations and political powers are looking at the nation that can be manipulated ceaselessly for political and strategic benefits. Meanwhile, the ordinary people of Yemen are starving and dying. The children are the worst victims of this going on war and the more the peace process is delayed the more will we be paying with their futures.
The crisis in Yemen is not because of any natural disaster or infection but out of a man made conflict where the innocent people have been endlessly suffering. Yemen being Arab’s poorest nations has been devastated by war. The war began when there was a failure to cope up with the political transition that was taking place in the country. The war followed the Arab Spring that had forced that forced the long term dictator of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand office to Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in 2011.
Today the people in Yemen do not know whether they are going to have their next meal or whether their children will continue to die because of starvation. The lives of children are being threatened and it is feared that if not much id done now, it may have severe implications. It is time that the war in Yemen stops and the innocent people get the peace that their lives deserve. Let us stop looking at Yemen merely as a site of political war or a strategic location, let Yemen be seen as a nation that has possibilities.
