UN Holds Donor Conference For Yemen

The United Nations secretary-general and high-ranking government officials from dozens of countries were meeting Tuesday in Geneva to drum up funds for war-torn Yemen, considered one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises. Antonio Guterres and top diplomats from Switzerland and Sweden are co-hosting a pledging conference in the Swiss city that’s aimed at helping assemble $2.1 billion in a UN relief appeal that was launched this year. The UN’s humanitarian arm, OCHA, has pointed to “an alarming 18.8 million people in need of humanitarian or protection assistance” in Yemen. The conference comes as aid agency Oxfam called on donor nations on Monday to step up life-saving assistance to millions of civilians in Yemen facing starvation and disease, rather than providing arms to fuel the deepening conflict. “Many areas of Yemen are on the brink of famine, and the cause of such extreme starvation is political,” the British charity said. Other groups say the medical sector is collapsing and children are dying from preventable diseases.