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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations relief wing has reported that it allocated 58 million U.S. dollars through the Humanitarian Pooled Fund to bolster life-saving activities across the crisis-gripped Middle East country, UN officials said here Friday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) made the allocation amid soaring malnutrition and collapsing basic services in Yemen, a staggering 18.8 million people need humanitarian assistance, the officials said.
According to the UN agency, among the millions of people in need, some 10.3 million require urgent assistance. Moreover, three million people are displaced.
In addition, malnutrition has soared more than 60 percent since 2015, affecting more than three million people, including 460,000 severely malnourished children under the age of five, OCHA reported.
The Humanitarian Pooled Fund is preparing to finance 31 projects in the sectors of food, nutrition, water, sanitation, and health, in order to address the crisis and assist at least three million people in 15 priority governorates and under-served governorates, such as Shabwah, Dhamar, Al-Jawf and Marib.
Nine national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (7 million U.S. dollars), 15 international NGOs (28 million U.S. dollars) and six UN agencies (23 million U.S. dollars) will implement the projects. In addition, nine local responders receive support via direct funding with a total of 3.8 million U.S. dollars granted to 28 national NGO's, which includes training and capacity building.
CHA also expressed gratitude for generous donations from Canada, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. However, it stressed that scale of the conflict in Yemen will require more resources and urgent aid, as the 2016 Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan is currently only 58 percent funded.
