Government criticised for cutting aid to ‘poverty superpower’ Yemen

Ministers blame Covid cost pressures for decision to more than halve funding to war-torn country

Starving Yemeni child
A Yemeni child suffering from malnutrition
(Image credit: (Essa Ahmed/AFP via Getty Images))

The British government is imposing a “death sentence” on Yemen by drastically cutting UK aid to the poverty-stricken country, the United Nations secretary general has warned.

Announcing that the UK would provide “at least” £87m ($120m) to Yemen this year - down from £214m in 2020 - Foreign Office minister James Cleverly told a virtual UN pledging conference yesterday that the Covid-19 pandemic has created “a difficult financial context for us all”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

  Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.