Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps his Department is taking to encourage international donors to release funds pledged for humanitarian relief in Yemen.

We remain very concerned by the potential funding gap the UN humanitarian response in Yemen is facing this year. The 2019 Yemen Pledging Conference in Geneva this March saw $2.6 billion pledged by international donors (against a $4.2 billion UN humanitarian appeal for 2019), approximately 20% of which has been disbursed to date.

The UK is regularly engaging with other donors at senior levels to urge the rapid disbursement of funding to the UN to enable it to cover urgent needs.

The UK has also brought forward funding and will have made available over half of our £200 million pledge for this financial year (2019/2020) by the beginning of June.