Yemen: Where the Hungry Seek Peace

Years of civil war and now rising food prices are driving people to the brink

Aslam Shuja, 32, from Yemen’s Hodeida Governorate near the Red Sea, lives below the poverty line, like more than two-thirds of the country’s population. He does not know where his next meal is coming from, except that he can search for it, as he often does, in garbage bins.

Before the Yemen civil war began in 2014, Shuja was an assistant in his father’s store. He remained in that position until the area where he lived was beset by mutual bombardment between the Iran-backed Ansar Allah group – or, the Houthis movement, the de facto authority in the north of Yemen, and the Giants Brigade, which is supported by the United Arab Emirates and is loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

Shuja searched for a job to sustain himself, but says that “all avenues were blocked.” He lost his entire family to the conflict and had to flee to the capital city, Sanaa, only to find himself between a rock of waiting for humanitarian aid from nonprofits and the hard place of searching for food in garbage bins to ease his burning hunger.

The Media Line met Shuja while he was just waking up under one of Sanaa’s overpass bridges, and he spoke to us as he thought of getting up to look for something to eat.

‘How is this person alive?’

One of the worst repercussions of the “catastrophic war” has been the collapse of the economy, economics journalist Muhammad al-Haddad told The Media Line.

The relocation of the Central Bank of Yemen from Sanaa to the city of Aden along with the failure to “neutralize the economy” from the effects of ongoing conflict has exacerbated the misery of the country’s approximately 30 million residents, he said.

“This was reflected in the creation of several problems by the parties to the conflict, such as the nonpayment of [public sector] salaries, the decline of the Yemeni riyal against the US dollar, and the high prices of foodstuffs. All of these factors led to an increase in poverty rates in Yemen,” added Haddad.

Forty-seven percent of Yemenis lived below the poverty line in 2014, and the war drove that figure to an estimated 75% by the end of 2019, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

No reliable current figures are available, but the UNDP projected that “if the fighting continues through 2022, Yemen will rank as the poorest country in the world, with 79% of the population living under the poverty line.”

Haddad added that the aid provided by the UN and other organizations covers barely 40% of the need in Yemen.

“You can imagine that a citizen has not received his monthly salary for five years and, in addition, he is unable to be self-employed due to the costs and paperwork, and then ask yourself: How is this person alive,” Haddad said.

The dream of return

The Media Line toured several internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the Yemeni governorate of Hajjah, which hosts more than 300 such camps.

Othman Khamis, an IDP living in one of the camps, said: “I was living with my family in the well-to-do border city of Harad. My children were able to go to school, play, and get most of their needs met before the civil war began in Yemen.”

“The city of Harad was subjected to bombing by Saudi warplanes, in a way that forced most of the residents to leave their homes and jobs and flee toward the unknown,” he said.

He added that the meals he and his family consume are insufficient and that the camp lacks the most basic necessities of life.

“We only dream of going back to those days before the war, but here we are in a giant cemetery where you can sense and talk about the suffering of others,” Khamis said.

Parallel markets and global crises

Researcher Wafaa al-Marouni holds the view that, although the war has caused many immediate economic problems, it also has produced a disaster with an impact that may last for decades, namely the emergence of a black market, money laundering, and the increasing effects of global crises on the local scene.

“We can talk about the $30 billion mentioned in statistics about instances of money laundering in Yemen which resulted from black markets for the Yemeni riyal and oil derivatives. These black markets later expanded to include airline tickets,” Marouni told The Media Line.

“The parallel markets, the impact of crises, and the failure of the parties to the conflict in Yemen to ‘neutralize the economy’ have led and will continue to lead to the expansion of poverty,” she said.

“If the problem persists, we need decades to return to the point where we were before this war,” Marouni said.

56% of Yemen’s wheat is under threat

Under normal conditions, Yemen imports 34% of its total annual wheat from Ukraine, in addition to another 22% which is imported by NGOs from Ukraine as humanitarian aid, “which means that there is a threat to 56% of the total wheat imports to Yemen” due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, according to Fouad Huwaidi, the head of the Commercial Exchange Department in the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

The Yemen-based Studies and Economic Media Center (SEMC) reported that despite the presence of wheat stocks in the markets, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine war wheat prices have risen by more than 35%, which is a clear indication of an increase in poverty and a decrease in the purchasing power of citizens.

The prospect of a global increase in wheat prices during the coming period will require additional funding that cannot be provided by countries such as Yemen. Even if Yemen were able to secure urgent funding, that solution would not be sustainable.

Repercussions of war

Yemen imports more than 95% of its wheat from abroad, and more than 80% of Yemenis need humanitarian aid, according to SEMC Executive Director Muhammad Ismail.

“The areas under the control of the Ansar Allah group, the de facto authority in the north of Yemen, whose population is 55% of Yemen’s total, are the most prone to poverty for reasons related to the nonpayment of salaries, high prices and the decrease in the purchasing power of Yemenis,” Ismail said.

The prices of basic foodstuffs have doubled since last year, he said, attributing this to the war.

More than 80% of Yemenis live below the poverty line, there are four million internally displaced persons, and two million children are out of school due to the war, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

As of last year, Yemen had lost $126 billion in lost economic activity since 2015, the UNDP reported. Most of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid, in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.