Date: May 29, 2018 Source: The Daily Star U.N. seeks to avert famine in Yemen with cash payout Associated Press AMMAN: The U.N. agency for children said Monday that it has distributed cash to nearly 1.5 million families in war-battered Yemen to help avert the risk of famine. The emergency payout, part of a $200 million World Bank-funded program, comes in the fourth year of a civil war that has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 3 million and crippled the country’s infrastructure. The U.N. considers Yemen to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance. Geert Cappelaere, the regional director of UNICEF, said the money – an average of $30 per family – reached an estimated 9 million people and allowed families to buy food and medicine for their children, many of them malnourished. It’s the second of three planned payments, with the next round set for August. “A small amount of cash for the most vulnerable, for the poorest of the poor makes a world of difference,” he said. He urged the international community to put a stop to the fighting in the Arab world’s poorest country. Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since March 2015, pitting a Arab-led coalition against Iran-backed Houthi rebels who control the capital and much of the country’s north. The United Nations aid chief last week called on the coalition which controls Yemen’s ports to expedite imports of vital food and fuel supplies, warning that a further 10 million Yemenis could face starvation by year-end. For several weeks at the end of last year, the Arab coalition imposed a blockade on Yemeni ports which it said was to prevent Houthis from importing weapons. This had a severe impact on Yemen, which traditionally imports 90 percent of its food. Under international pressure the coalition lifted the blockade, but tightened ship inspections. Key supplies including some needed to combat deadly water-borne disease cholera remain on the prohibited list of imports, Mark Lowcock, U.N. emergency relief coordinator said. Houthi forces have also increased restrictions on the work of aid agencies in the northern areas they control, and it has become more difficult to work along the western coast and in the city of Taiz, he said.