Yemen is going through a very tough time at the moment - there is a civil war going on which started around about 4 years ago. This has caused a famine and a humanitarian crisis, Yemen needs our help! 

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So why did the civil war start? In 2011 Yemen was run by Ali Abdulluh Saleh (their old prime minister), he ran the country as an autocracy but he had to resign and hand his job over to Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi because of an uprising in the middle east. When Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi took over , he wanted to run Yemen as a democracy, this led to many problems - it split the country in half. 

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The Houthis are a group of people who are  backed by Saudi Arabia , and are based in the north of Yemen. At first they liked Hadi but soon after they turned against him because they believed that the country should have more political and economic power. The people who are against the Houthis are the government forces, they are backed by the United Arab Emirates and they are on Hadi’s side. These are only two of the different groups with different beliefs in Yemen, but there are many more. These groups are fighting in Yemen and that is what caused the civil war and over 100,000 people have been killed. 

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During this time a famine started, killing 85,000 people, leaving 80% of Yemen’s population in need of humanitarian aid and the hospitals and health care systems collapsing. There was an outbreak of cholera in June 2017 and 5000 cases were discovered each day,  people were not able to get the health care they needed. The corona virus has had the same effect, if not a worse effect on Yemen. It is thought that 1 in 5 people will die from the coronavirus in Yemen and 8 out of 10 of those deaths will be at home. I hope that you have learnt more about what’s happening to Yemen in this article and will do your part to help them. Donate, share and educate yourself about Yemen, and hopefully we can save their country!