In displaced camps and remote districts like Taiz and Hajjah, the phrase starving to death is not an exaggeration. It is a daily reality, because international food aid funding has been cut, families are forced to harvest the waxy, bitter leaves of a local vine known as the halas tree. To make them even remotely edible, parents must boil the leaves for hours to soften them into a sour, acidic green paste. It provides almost no nutritional value, but it fills the empty, aching stomachs of crying children.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm going to die without food," one father shared with relief organizations. "When there's nothing left, we eat the leaves. It's the only thing keeping us alive."
Yemen has long been labeled one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, but a recent shift has pushed it over the edge. The food aid has stopped. International donors have shifted their focus and money to other global conflicts, leaving the United Nations and organizations like the World Food Programme (WFP) with severely depleted budgets.
Even where food is available in local markets, severe inflation and currency collapse, means that ordinary citizens cannot afford basic staples like flour, sugar or oil.
The ongoing civil war has destroyed infrastructure, cut off supply routes and displaced millions from their homes, leaving them entirely dependent on international food aid. When a family's monthly food basket runs out or fails to arrive entirely, they have no fallback plan. The halas leaves, which used to be an occasional fallback food, has now become a daily staple.
For the children of Yemen, eating leaves is doing more harm than good. Health workers are reporting staggering numbers of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Without proper nutrients, infants are weighing half of what they should and a sign of extreme protein and vitamin deficiency. Even when these children manage to get treated at temporary nutrition clinics, they are often sent right back to camps with no food and contaminated water, restarting the deadly cycle.
Hunger is silent in these remote corners of the world and thousands of families are suffering this silence because they cannot afford the transportation costs to reach the nearest health center. So innocent lives in Yemen hang in the balance, waiting to see if the international food aid will arrive to restore life saving aid or continue to starve to death.
سبحانك اللهم وبحمدك أشهد ان لا اله الا انت استغفرك وأتوب اليك