Listen to this articleListen to this article | 5 minsinfoWhile international attention is focused on the conflict in Iran and its regional spillover, a devastating crisis in Yemen is drawing almost no notice. The Yemeni people are starving in silence. More than half the population, 18 million people, is projected to face worsening levels of food insecurity in early 2026. To grasp the scale of this crisis, imagine the entire population of the Netherlands going hungry.In a survey conducted by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) last year, nearly every respondent identified food as their most urgent need, with almost 80 percent of families reporting severe hunger. These are not isolated hardships, but a widespread reality shaping daily survival across communities.Our findings echo the most recent Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projections, which warn that another one million people are currently at risk of slipping into life-threatening hunger, classified as IPC Phase 3+. IPC Phase 3 and above means families are routinely missing meals, relying on debt, and selling off what little they have left— jewellery, livestock, tools, even doors and cooking gas cylinders—to buy food. It also means children are more likely to become acutely malnourished, and illnesses that would normally be survivable become deadly.Even more alarming, pockets of famine affecting more than 40,000 people are expected to emerge across four districts within the next two months, marking Yemen’s bleakest food security outlook since 2022. For many families, meals have become a daily ration of bread and water. For others, adults go without food so their children can eat. Advertisement In health facilities, we see the consequences: children dangerously weakened by malnutrition, and nursing mothers, themselves undernourished, doing everything they can to sustain their babies.In these conditions, hunger is not just the absence of food, it is the steady shutdown of the body. Parents are forced to stretch tiny amounts of flour into flatbread or water down lentils until they are mostly broth. These coping mechanisms are now commonplace in communities we visited where families survive on one meal per day because prices have soared and incomes have collapsed.Yemen has historically produced only a small fraction of its own food, relying on imports for roughly 80–90 percent of staple grains. A structural vulnerability that has been made worse by years of conflict and economic contraction. The fighting has curtailed many people’s ability to work their lands or tend …
