KSRelief chief: Yemeni ports under legitimate control open to aid

KSRelief General Supervisor Abdullah Al-Rabeeah addresses a high-level meeting in Rome on Friday. (SPA)

ROME: Yemeni ports under the control of the legitimate government can receive humanitarian aid, Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, general supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief), has said.
Al-Rabeeah said that the Kingdom had offered the Saudi Port of Jazan to be used along with other ports to help the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen.
Al-Rabeeah, who is at a high-level meeting in Rome for the Partnership for Permanent Peace in Yemen, condemned the 16 attacks of Houthi militias against UN and other relief organizations during 2015-2017, which involved murder, kidnapping, imprisonment and closure of offices, as well as extortion and looting.
The Houthi militias had closed ports and offices of international organizations working in Yemen and seized 65 ships, 124 relief convoys, and 628 aid shipments. He said the Houthi militias were targeting residential areas, humanitarian aid and humanitarian workers.
Al-Rabeeah said that the UN and international community should do more to hold militias accountable for hampering humanitarian work, and for their targeting of civilians and use of children in war crimes. Houthi militias had recruited more than 20,000 Yemeni children, according to human rights organizations. He said that the Kingdom was rehabilitating 2,000 children who were previously recruited by the militias.
Al-Rabeeah said that total aid provided by the Kingdom to Yemen from April 2015 to October 2017 reached $8.27 billion, noting that (KSRelief) delivered aid used airdrops of food and medical aid in the city of Taiz to break the blockade of the militias.
KSRelief delivered 161 projects in Yemen through 86 local and international partners. These projects included food security, nutrition, shelters, social support, and environmental sanitation.
Al-Rabeeah said that KSRelief was particularly interested in programs helping women and children, and ran 148 such programs in Yemen. KSRelief work covered 80 projects in education, protection, food security, health, nutrition, water, environmental sanitation, and personal hygiene.
Al-Rabeeah said that the Kingdom had been working to limit the spread of cholera in Yemen. It donated more than $76 million to the Yemeni Ministry of Public Health and Population, the WHO, and UNICEF. KSRelief sent a convoy carrying more than 550,000 tons of medical equipment to Yemeni regions to fight the epidemic. The rate of recovery, he said, had reached 99.5 percent, which meant many organizations could close Cholera treatment centers in some areas.
He also called on UN and humanitarian organizations in Yemen to decentralize their humanitarian efforts and avoid opening their headquarters in one city only.