The European Commission announced additional humanitarian aid to Yemen in response to a rapidly developing food crisis. According to the Commission, the new funds will increase and improve access to clean water, support feeding programmes, develop cash-for-work schemes and provide cash grants for 200,000 people.

Yemen will receive €5 million from the EU with the aim at fighting a hunger crisis. According to the European Commission, malnutrition rates in some parts of Yemen are among the highest in the world. The crisis is made more complex by the deterioration of the economic situation, the recent increase in population displacements and the arrival of new refugees from the Horn of Africa. In addition to these funds, the Commission recently opened a call for proposals to enhance Access to Finance for Micro and SMEs in this country.

Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for Humanitarian aid and Crisis response, highlighted that 44% of the Yemen population are surviving on meagre food rations. The EU is increasing the aid not just because it must prevent malnutrition from rising further but also because hunger and suffering can only destabilise the fragile on-going transition. Indeed poverty combined with conflict, drought, refugee flows and rising food prices, has aggravated an already deep humanitarian crisis during 2011.

The Commission stressed that the new funds will increase and improve access to clean water, support feeding programmes, develop cash-for-work schemes and provide cash grants for 200,000 people. The European Commission has already mobilised €20 million in humanitarian aid in Yemen in 2012. It funds health care and shelter projects, invests in the management of refugee camps and provides basic household items to displaced Yemenis and refugees from the Horn of Africa.