Hunger and malnutrition stalking Yemen's children as violence escalates

This is a summary of what was said by the UNICEF Country Representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

ADEN, 25 September 2026 – “Children across Yemen are yet again at the sharpest end of escalating conflict. Allow me to start today not with a number, but with a child.

“Yesterday, I visited the Al Firdous displacement centre in Aden and saw firsthand the aggravating impact renewed fighting is having on children and families. 

“There, I met four-year-old Taha at a UNICEF-supported mobile clinic. His family had just fled violence in Mokha District, some 200 kilometers away, leaving behind their home and belongings. 

“Taha is suffering from severe acute malnutrition. His mother told us ‘We escaped with nothing. My only fear was that I would lose my son before finding help.’

“Taha's story is sadly not unique.

“What he and his family are going through is being repeated across the country, hitting a population already weakened by years of persistent food and nutrition crises. 

“Another vicious cycle is being accelerated – one children in Yemen know only too well: conflict drives hunger, and hunger makes children more vulnerable to conflict.

“In the past weeks, of nearly 2,900 children screened by UNICEF mobile nutrition teams in areas where safe humanitarian access is ensured and possible, more than one in four children were acutely malnourished, and over 200 had severe acute malnutrition. 

“But this is only a glimpse of how devastating the situation really is. 

“Across the country – and already before the latest uptick in fighting - more than 2.2 million children under five were projected to be acutely malnourished in 2026, with over half a million suffering from severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form.

“Against this already dire backdrop, access to healthcare and nutrition treatment is being disrupted. For too many families, the search for food is now happening on the move.

“Over the past three weeks, nearly 130,000 people – including an estimated 71,000 children – have been forced from their homes. The majority are displaced in the southwestern Taiz Governorate, unable to move to safer areas because of fighting, blocked roads, or lack of transportation. 

 “Some families have been displaced not once, not twice, but up to six times.

“Haifa, a young mother who fled Yemen’s west coast, told us: ‘The sounds of gunfire were closing in and the house was shaking. I did not have time to think. I just knew I had to run with my family.’

“Today, they live in a tent in extreme heat, with no source of income and struggling for food and medicine.

“‘Displacement has stripped us of dignity,’ Haifa says.

“That is what displacement does. It does not only take away a house. It takes away livelihoods. Community. Independence. Routine. The certainty that tomorrow will look anything like today.

“Beyond being uprooted from their homes, too many children have already paid the heaviest price in this conflict. 

“Since 3 September, UNICEF has verified that at least 15 children have been killed and 14 injured. Three more are still reported missing.

“Behind every one of those children is a parent living through the unimaginable – grief, fear, or the agony of not knowing.

“Education is also being impacted. In the past weeks, 243 schools have closed or suspended learning, affecting more than 137,000 students.

“UNICEF is expanding our emergency response to reach up to 231,000 people in Yemen, many of them children, through mobile health and nutrition teams, safe water, support to health facilities and child protection services.

“But humanitarian assistance cannot substitute for protection. We cannot keep asking children to survive what they should never have been exposed to in the first place.

“All parties must protect children and civilian infrastructure, uphold international humanitarian law, and facilitate safe and unimpeded humanitarian access.

“The children I have met here do not talk about geopolitics. They ask about home, school, the people they left behind. They ask where they are going to sleep tonight. 

“These should not be the defining questions of a childhood. 

“Yemen’s children have already lost too much to conflict. They should not be forced to lose more.”