Imagine what would happen if we learned that seven million people in the United States were starving to death. Can you think of the food drives and fundraising that would take place if President Trump were to announce that 125,000 children were on their deathbeds because of lack of food? What if you learned a seven year old only weighed 11 pounds?
Would you try to do something?
Of course you would! Because these are lives we’re talking about. And not just any lives, but children’s lives. The future of a population is at stake.
Thankfully, this isn’t the case here in the United States. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in other parts of the world. All of those scenarios are the catastrophic reality that children in Yemen are faced with today. What’s worse, is that the political culture of the civil-war-ridden country makes it nearly impossible for anyone’s voices to be heard.
But these people are desperate. More than 27 million lives are at stake, and we are their only hope. It is our duty to be a voice for the voiceless, and to rally behind those who are nearing death at the hands of a “man-made catastrophe” of unfathomable proportions.
“It’s just desperation and death. It is as bad as it gets. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie this bad,” said David Beasley, the U.N.’s emergency first responder to prevent famine and Director of the World Food Program.
Beasley says he believes if the world were to see the extreme human suffering that’s taking place in Yemen, people would “step up” and support innocent children in their fight to eat.
The problem is that Yemen is currently controlled by Saudi Arabia, whose government allows hardly any information, reports, or relief to make its way in or out of the country.
It’s at the point now that the Saudis are using starvation as a weapon of war.
“We’re on the brink of famine,” Beasley says. “If we don’t receive the monies that we need in the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die. We’ve been able to avert famine, but we know three things that are happenin’. We know that people are dying. We know that people are wasting. And we know that children are stunting.”
The World Food Program’s Stephen Anderson is trying to mobilize food for seven million people in Yemen, from an African port. The program hopes to provide two million, 110-pound bags of wheat flour to people in Yemen every month. But the task is easier said than done.
“We’re desperately praying for peace,” Anderson says. “Because that’s the only sustainable way of really rebuilding the situation our stated objective is to try to prevent a famine from occurring.”
The U.N. World Food Program is the largest humanitarian aid agency, and the U.S. is its biggest donor.
Learn more about how you can respond to the problem by visiting the World Food Program’s website. Your involvement could literally mean the difference between life and death for an innocent child in Yemen.
