The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has stressed the need to reopened permanently Yemeni ports before more people die.
The director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen, Mutasim Hamdan said on Monday “Actions taken by the Saudi-led Coalition to stem the flow of fuel and other supplies equate to a slow means of killing people, and the inaction of the UN Security Council is aiding it,”.
“We need an absolute guarantee that Yemen’s main ports will be allowed to receive commercial supplies at the rate needed beyond this thirty-day window. Yemen is not a game.”, Hamdan said.
He said “On 19 January, the 30-day period set by the Saudi-led coalition in which blockade measures were eased, will expire. This is generating widespread uncertainty about what happens next, leaving millions of Yemeni people hanging in the balance”.
As the stipulated period is now about to end, the delivery of commercial goods to Yemen’s Red Sea Ports must continue, and ports must be opened permanently, he added.
He said “While tons of food and fuel have reached the ports in recent weeks the first commercial supplies to do so after a 45-day blockade on Yemen 17.8 million people struggle to afford enough to eat each day, and 8.4 million are at risk of sliding into famine.”
Based on 2017 data from the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM), 1.69 million tons of fuel were discharged at Hodeidah and Ras Isa ports through the course of the year which NRC calculates to be roughly a third of the volume needed through these ports to meet needs, he added.
