AS WE approach the seventh anniversary of the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military intervention and blockade in Yemen, the horror continues.

By the end of 2021 the UN Development Programme estimated 377,000 people had been killed in Yemen, either directly through violence or indirectly through hunger and disease. This follows 2018 analysis from Save the Children that estimated “85,000 children under five may have died from extreme hunger since the war in Yemen escalated” in March 2015 with the Saudi involvement.

More broadly, in September 2021 the UN World Food Programme warned that 16 million Yemenis — over half the population — were “marching toward starvation.” And in 2018 Mark Lowcock, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said Yemen was dealing with “what most people think is the biggest epidemic of cholera outbreak the world has seen.”