RIYADH (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2020) UNICEF is in urgent need of $64 million to assist the children in need in conflict-torn Yemen, fund middle East and North Africa communications chief Juliette Touma told Sputnik.
"We urgently need $64 million," Touma said on the sidelines of a humanitarian forum in Saudi Arabia. "It is so important that something continues to come to organizations like UNICEF because the money we use to deliver lifesaving assistance to kids, to families in need, it really makes the situation a little bit better for poor families."
Touma said, however, that this will not help bring the Yemeni crisis to an end.
"The solution is not humanitarian," she said. "We do want to continue to deliver assistance to children... but really the solution here, like the situation in Syria [and] Libya, is a political solution."
"We do hope that the parties to the conflict go back to the political track... and that the efforts of the UN special envoy yield fruit to basically to bring a peaceful end to this carnage and to this war in Yemen," she added.
The Saudi capital plans to host an international Yemen pledging event on April 2, which the UN hopes will bring it more money to fund relief efforts in the war-torn country, where 80 percent of the population requires some kind of humanitarian assistance.
Yemen has been facing a severe humanitarian crisis since 2015, caused by the ongoing military conflict between the government headed by President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and the Houthi rebel movement, which controls the country's north, including the capital of Sanaa.
