The World Food Programme (WFP) issued an urgent appeal on Tuesday for $23 million in “financial support from international donors for food aid to Yemen specifically targeted at women and children,” AFP/Google.com reports. The agency said that the “figure represents 42 percent of the 55 million dollars that it needs for the current year to improve the nutrition of more than 1.6 million vulnerable people in Yemen,” the news service writes.

Gian Carlo Cirri, WFP Yemen representative, said, “Volatile food and fuel prices combined with conflict and natural disasters over the past years have severely affected the country, leaving more than one in three Yemenis suffering from chronic hunger.” According to Cirri, “the current global financial crisis is further compounding the situation” (7/8).

The WFP expects that by October, it will not have enough resources to continue assisting more than 815,000 of the “most vulnerable people.” Abdulkareem Al-Eryani, a former prime minister of Yemen, last month warned that there could be a famine in the country next year, writes the Yemen Times (Al-Hilaly, 7/8).

The aid shortages are jeopardizing two programs that “benefit poverty-struck rural families by providing food in exchange for sending their daughters to school and regularly visiting health centres,” the National reports (Reinl, 7/7).