Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment her Department has made of the humanitarian situation in Yemen.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The recent escalation in fighting and restrictions on commercial and humanitarian access threaten to push the country into catastrophic famine. The UN estimates that almost 18 million people in Yemen do not have reliable access to food and over 8 million people face extreme food shortages.

The International Development Secretary visited Djibouti and Saudi Arabia in December, where she announced a further £50 million in life-saving UK aid to provide food and fuel for millions of people. This announcement increased our support to Yemen to £205 million overall for this financial year (2017/18) making us the third-largest humanitarian donor to Yemen overall and the second-largest to the UN Humanitarian Appeal.