Attachments
6 March 2025
As delivered
Thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Special Envoy Grundberg, for your tireless efforts.
Madam President,
When I last briefed the Council on Yemen, I shared detail on the gravity of the crisis, and we discussed the growing constraints on our humanitarian work.
Since then, both have got worse. And now severe funding cuts have been a body blow to our work to save lives. It is of course for individual countries to decide how to spend their money. But it is the pace at which so much vital work has been shut down that adds to the perfect storm that we face.
I have asked our Humanitarian Coordinators, in Yemen and elsewhere, to report by the end of next week on where we will need to cut back most dramatically, and the implications of the tough choices we are making on which lives not to save.
I won’t repeat the list of humanitarian numbers in my last briefing. It is more incumbent upon this Council to focus on how we use your collective weight to deal with the causes of those numbers.
My three asks of you have not changed: Firstly, please back our effort to get access to civilians at greatest risk; second, please ensure we have the funding, the money, to save as many lives as we can; and thirdly, public and private pressure to release humanitarians who have been arbitrarily detained while working to deliver your instructions.
Madam President,
As the Special Envoy underlined, we are approaching International Women’s Day on 8 March. After decades of progress on women’s rights – too slow, but progress – we are now seeing a sustained and deliberate pushback against equality. We must recognize this danger, and we must respond.
So I want to focus today on the humanitarian situation faced by women and girls in Yemen, and the impact of funding cuts on their lives.
And, Madam President, it is a grim picture. The crisis has a disproportionate and devastating impact on women and girls. They have suffered from systematic discrimination and exclusion for decades. In 2021, Yemen ranked second to last in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, and in 2023 it ranked second to last in the Georgetown Institute Women, Peace and Security index. There is no sign of progress for them.
I don’t know whether our numbers can truly convey the challenge. But here are some to think about. 9.6 million women and girls are in severe need of life-saving humanitarian assistance, facing hunger, violence and a collapsing healthcare system.
1.3 million pregnant women and new mothers are malnourished, putting their own health at risk, and exposing their children to disease and long-term issues.
Yemen’s maternal mortality rate is the highest in the Middle East – more than 10 times that of Saudi Arabia or Oman. More than 6 million women and girls face heightened risks of abuse and exploitation.
1.5 million girls in Yemen remain out of school, denying them their right to education and preventing them from breaking the cycles of discrimination and violence facing them.
Nearly one third of all girls in Yemen are married before the age of 18, stripping them of their childhood, education and future.
As your funding for Yemen evaporates, the numbers in my next briefings will be worse.
What does that mean for the women and girls who are the humans behind those numbers? More will die. More will be left with no choice but to adopt dangerous coping mechanisms: survival sex, begging, coerced prostitution, human trafficking and selling their children.
And yet, Madam President, despite bearing the greatest burdens of this war, this displacement and this deprivation, women remain on the front lines of survival and recovery, raising kids, pushing day to day for a better future, rebuilding communities, pushing for peace, often with little recognition or support.
These are acts of quiet heroism, dignity and resilience. And we will do all we can to support them with the dwindling resources we are given.
This includes a doctor in Aden – one of only two women fistula surgeons in the country, performing 30 surgeries a month, who received United Nations-funded training to specialize in her critical field.
It includes a midwife, the first to work in Hadramout Governorate and whose work, and the work of her colleagues, has been critical to the decline in maternal mortality.
And it includes the widowed mother in Al Hodeidah Governorate, who cares for her three children, one with a disability and one in need of ongoing medical treatment, and for whom the support of humanitarian partners is essential to her ability to do so.
Just three examples among thousands that I hope resonate through the noise, distraction and the attacks on humanitarian work. I am not here to defend programmes, spreadsheets and institutions, but people.
I also want to recognize the women and girls who are on the front line of the humanitarian response. They lead half of the NGOs in our Humanitarian Country Team. And 40 per cent of the Yemen Humanitarian Fund goes to women-led organizations, the vast majority local NGOs.
These funds ensured that pregnant and breastfeeding women got safe and dignified healthcare, that survivors of violence accessed life-saving services, and that communal spaces and sanitation facilities are safe for women to use.
Madam President, as the humanitarian response in Yemen faces severe funding cuts, these programmes are all at risk, and along with them, vital lifelines for women and girls across the country.
Funding suspensions have already forced 22 safe spaces to close, denying services and support to over 11,000 women and girls in high-risk areas.
Survivors of gender-based violence no longer have access to life-saving healthcare, psychosocial support and legal aid. And child protection programmes have been halted, leading to even higher risks of child labor, recruitment into armed groups and child marriage.
Those are choices we make when we cut funding.
Madam President,
On a separate issue, earlier this week, the US designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization was completed.
From the UN humanitarian perspective, our job remains the same: to save lives.
We need to continue our life-saving work and ensure civilians in Yemen have access to essential food and medicine – whether through commercial or humanitarian channels.
If this is not possible it would have serious impact on communities already on the precipice of disaster. Women and children will, I am afraid, again bear the brunt.
Madam President,
This is a tough time to be a humanitarian. But it is much tougher for the people we serve. And right now, it is getting even tougher for the women and girls of Yemen.
The decisions you take will determine whether it gets worse.
Thank you.
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Media contacts:
In New York: Eri Kaneko, kaneko@un.org, +1 917 208 8910
In Geneva: Jens Laerke, laerke@un.org, +41 79 472 9750