WFP: Yemen’s ‘new chapter’ as Houthis accept aid safeguards

The UN food aid organisation said a biometric system would help get food to 150,000 needy Yemenis in Houthi-run areas

Yemenis shop for oranges at a wholesale market in Sanaa. EPA

Top UN humanitarian David Beasley on Wednesday said Yemen's Houthi rebels had finally agreed to implement a long-delayed scheme to deliver food to Yemeni families without it falling into the hands of militants.

Mr Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, said a biometric system would help to get food to 150,000 needy Yemenis in Houthi-run areas while ensuring the aid was not diverted elsewhere.

Should the scheme succeed, it could be expanded to include $500 million in cash transfers to struggling Yemenis in 2021 – a liquidity boost that could prop up a war-ravaged economy and a tumbling riyal, Mr Beasley said.

"On Sunday, we finally got the Ansar Allah authorities to come forward on the biometric registration of beneficiaries in Sanaa city," Mr Beasley told an online UN Security Council meeting, using the official name for the Iran-backed Houthi movement.

"This is a pilot project of 150,000 beneficiaries and I like to think this is a major step forward, a new chapter of co-operation between all the parties in Yemen, and one that will allow us to scale up and roll out biometric registration in Ansar Allah areas as quickly as possible to give the donors the confidence to provide fresh funds."

The Iran-aligned Houthis took over the capital Sanaa and other key cities in 2014 after ousting the Saudi Arabia-backed government of President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi. The ensuing war led to what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The WFP's biometric system uses iris scanning, fingerprints or facial recognition to ensure that aid goes to those in need. It is already used in areas run by Yemen's UN-recognised government.

The WFP in April halved aid handouts to Yemenis living in Houthi-run areas after donors cut funding over fears that humanitarian supplies had been diverted through a local partner linked to Houthi officials.

The Houthis had presented unnecessary obstructions to implementing the biometric scheme and dragged out talks over "countless days, weeks and months", Mr Beasley said. "The last thing we need are these kinds of games," he said.

Warning of a “countdown to a catastrophe in Yemen”, Mr Beasely said donors could now have faith in the biometric system and other improvements in Houthi-run areas and stump up $1.9 billion for aid work in Arabia’s poorest nation.

"If we choose to look away, there's no doubt in my mind that Yemen will be plunged into a devastating famine within a few short months," said Mr Beasley, whose WFP was last month awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Houthi's ousting of President Hadi's government from Sanaa prompted military intervention in 2015 by an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia. The fighting left two thirds of Yemen's population, about 24.1 million people, needing aid.

Separately, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday criticised the Houthis for oppressing the shrinking Jewish community of Sanaa, the capital, and called for the release from prison of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, a Yemeni Jew.

"Mr Marhabi has been wrongfully detained by the Houthi militia for four years," Mr Pompeo said. "His health continues to deteriorate as he languishes in a Sanaa prison, where the threat of contracting Covid-19 is a real possibility."