U.S. policy toward Yemen missing key component of food

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this year, "we recognize that the challenges facing Yemen cannot be solved by military action alone." While Clinton's statement is on the mark, U.S. policy toward Yemen unfortunately is not. It´s missing a crucial ingredient: Food.

No plan for peace and stability in Yemen will succeed without tackling the hunger crisis facing that country. One of every three Yemenis is suffering from chronic hunger.

The U.S. sent 150 million in military aid to Yemen recently so it can resist Al Qaeda and extremists. But while that´s happening, Yemenis displaced by a conflict in the North and living in camps are having their food rations cut. This is the result of low funding from the international community for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). These rations will go to zero eventually if new funding is not found.

Special nutritional foods for 50,000 young children living in the camps will have to be cut entirely in May. Having these foods removed at this point in their young lives can have drastic implications for their future.

Daly Belgasmi of WFP says,"By June, all our programmes for the operation in Yemen will collapse if funding is not made available." A school feeding program for children throughout all of Yemen has been suspended since last June.

How can the U.S. and the international community find this acceptable?

What the U.S. should be doing is rallying international support for stabilizing the food situation in Yemen. Rations for those displaced need to be restored, and quickly. Child feeding programs have to be restarted and expanded. We should know that from our experience in the World War II era when children all across Europe and Asia were suffering. Why are we not more aggressively attacking this problem of child hunger in Yemen as well as in other countries?

If every person urged their representatives in government to take action on Yemen, then something positive could happen. For the longer term, the U.S. really needs a "food ambassador" or envoy as called for in the Roadmap to End Global Hunger legislation. Neither Congress nor the administration has taken any action on this. Unfortunately, we can see the results in Yemen and many other countries.