‘Outraged’: WFP says an employee dies while detained in northern Yemen | News of the United Nations
The agency confirms the death of an employee the day after the UN pauses surgery in northern Yemen for the detention of Houthhi.
A worker of help from the World United Nations Food World Program (WFP) died in a Yemeni prison three weeks after being detained in the north of the country, the organization said.
The announcement on Tuesday comes the day after the UN Operation to suspend assistance In the northern region of Saad, citing the detention of his Houthi Group staff, which controls the area.
WFP was not released when or how his employee died, but said he was one of the seven local staff who had “arbitrarily detained local authorities” from January 23.
In a statement published on the Social Media Platform X, WFP said the organization “Bitter and bitter” after death. The UN has repeatedly invited Houthis to release the detained UN members.
“Outraged and bitter with a tragic loss of a member of the WFP team, Ahmed, who lost his life while arbitrarily detained in Yemen,” wrote the WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain on X.
She added that the 40-year-old who joined the charity in 2017 “played a key role in our mission to help save food.” He is survived by his wife and two children.
In a statement on Monday, the UN spokesman explained that the “extraordinary” decision to stop all operations and programs in Saada was due to the lack of necessary security conditions.
Houthy authorities detained dozens of UN staff from 2021, and the group held at least 24 people before the latest arrests. The group sometimes portrayed workers as associates with Western intelligence agencies, which is a charge that the humanitarian community decisively rejected.
The UN Decision is expected to influence the global response to one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters to stop surgery. The seven UN agencies operate in Saada – including WFP, the World Health Organization and UNICEF – together with several other international assistance organizations.
Yemen was the focus of one of the world’s largest humanitarian operations over the decade of the civil war, which disrupted food supplies and displaced millions of people. WFP announced that it had assisted 47 percent of the Yemen’s population – which accounts for about 15.3 million people – 2023.
The UN project that the need for help is only growing. The agency estimated that more than 19 million people would need humanitarian aid this year throughout Yemen, because many are engaged in climate shocks, malnutrition, cholera and economic effects of war.
The Yemeni Civil War began in 2014 when Houthis took control of the capital, Sana and most of the northern region of the country. The offensive forced the Government, led by then President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, to escape south. It is currently located in the port city of Aden.
The conflict was killed by more than 150,000 people, including civilians and fighters, and in recent years he was mostly agreed by the stare because the efforts of permanent peace stopped.
