Written by: Jolien Veldwijk, Assistant Country Director of Programs, CARE Yemen
Today is my birthday. I am not a big fan of celebrating my birthday in general because it makes me feel like time is running out and I still have so much to do. But one thing I have learned in Yemen is that we should celebrate whenever there is something to celebrate. And even though today is five days before we enter the fourth year since the escalation of the conflict, my Yemeni friends and colleagues are making plans to celebrate my birthday. Going to the field, getting out of our office in Sana’a to see the work we do with Yemeni communities, is one of my favourite things to do and generally makes for a great celebration.
But my trip to a camp for displaced people in Amran, a northern governorate in Yemen, today was different. Our local partner Yemen Association for Reproductive Health (YARH) invited me and my colleagues to visit their mobile reproductive health team in a camp where families escaping the conflict from different places in Yemen are now living in tents. The effects of a harsh winter are still evident in the tired faces of the people who are moving around the many tents. More than 4000 people live here and most of them are children. When I go to the mobile clinic, which is also in a tent, the space is divided in two parts: the left part functions as a maternity ward and the right part is the counseling and family planning section. But the tent is filled with women and their children and there is barely any space for the doctor and the midwife to move around or speak with patients. Their capacity is to help 60 patients per day and considering the team consists of only four people and they cover 20 health points across the governorate I am deeply impressed with what they are able to accomplish.
However, even though the very important work YARH is doing to help women give safely birth to their babies, once these babies enter this world, they still do not have a high chance of survival. They are born in tents to mothers who have been unable to feed themselves properly because when it comes to food, or rather lack thereof, they will feed their children and skip their own meals. These are impossible choices. Amran’s last winter was harsh and without a proper home, gas, fuel and not enough food and clothes, it is incredibly difficult to stay warm and healthy. Today a man was telling me that his son is planning to sell his kidney on the black market in order to pay for the healthcare of his mother. I saw four-year-old children who are the size of my two-year-old niece. I held a baby who is four months old but not bigger than a newborn.
On days like these, when you meet children who are malnourished and you realize, even if we manage to save the lives of these kids, there are still hundreds of thousands of other kids in Yemen dying of hunger, and then hope escapes you. Whatever we do to feed the hungry in Yemen, if there is no political solution to the conflict that will bring peace, the suffering will never end. If all parties to the conflict are not pushed to come to an agreement that will end the suffering of Yemeni people, whatever we do is not enough.
As my colleague Hind writes so beautifully in her article: “Peace has to take the place of destruction. Development and building have to take the place of starvation. Laughter and happiness and normalcy should take the place of the endless stories of sadness and destruction and death. Yemenis deserve more than this. Yemen deserves better.”
Read more about CARE's work in Yemen.