The U.N. Security Council met on Friday to discuss the war in Yemen, with focus on the humanitarian disaster unfolding as a result. “Ultimately, gains on the battlefield cannot substitute for the negotiations that will be required to settle the conflict,” the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, stressed, as other humanitarian officials warned of mounting civilian casualties, widespread child malnutrition and an increasingly overwhelmed aid response, reported a U.N. News summary of the meeting.

“Today, I must warn the Council that Yemen’s humanitarian crisis has sharply worsened,” said Mohamed Yahya, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, underscoring: “Further inaction will cost lives.”

“More than 200,000 people have been displaced across Yemen since the beginning of August,” Yahya said, adding that it represents the highest level of new displacement since the 2022 truce. Further, nearly 4,000 people face “an impossible choice”—to stay, risking their lives, or leave and lose everything, having fled across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to seek safety in Djibouti and Somalia. “Women and children are paying the highest price,” he stressed. Outlining the alarming humanitarian situation, he pointed to 2.2 million children under age five being acutely malnourished; 250 school closures depriving 137,000 children from access to feeding programs; a health system close to collapse; and an increased risk of disease, amid rising cases of suspected measles and cholera.