UN humanitarian affairs chief Mark Lowcock is to testify to the UN Security Council today, that the US plan to designate the Houthi Anarallah movement as terrorist will likely lead to “a large-scale famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.” The Associated Press, which says it saw a copy of Lowcock’s statement in advance, reports that Lowock says that data show that 16 million of Yemen’s 30 million people will go hungry this year. “Already, about 50,000 people are essentially starving to death in what is essentially a small famine,” he said. “Another 5 million are just one step behind them.”
Already, commercial firms that supply food to Yemen are pulling back because of the designation and, Lowcock warned, the waivers that the State Department said it will provide will not prevent famine. “What would prevent it? A reversal of the decision,” Lowcock said.
Lowcock said the U.N. talked to commercial traders when the U.S. first raised the possibility of designating the Houthis as terrorists, and they said they weren’t sure they would be able to continue importing food. After the U.S. announcement, Lowcock said, the U.N. went back to the traders and “the Yemeni companies who bring in most of the food are using words like `disaster,’ `havoc’ and `unimaginable’ when they describe to us what they fear is coming.”
He said global suppliers, bankers, shippers, and insurers for Yemeni companies are “very risk-averse” and some are now phoning their Yemeni partners saying “they now plan to walk away from Yemen altogether.”
“They say the risks are too high,” Lowcock said. “They fear being accidentally or otherwise caught up in U.S. regulatory action which would put them out of business or into jail.”
