Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the level of the funding gap for the UN Global Humanitarian Response for Yemen; and what steps her Department is taking to help (a) close that gap and (b) meet the humanitarian need in Yemen.

We are extremely concerned about the lack of funding for the UN’s humanitarian response in Yemen, which is constraining the UN’s ability to address the devastating humanitarian situation, now being compounded by COVID-19.

In response, the UK has committed £160 million for the current financial year, the third highest pledge at the 2020 Yemen Humanitarian Pledging Conference. We have already disbursed 32% of this funding and will have disbursed over 50% by the end of July.

Our new funding aims to provide support to at least 300,000 vulnerable people each month to help buy food and household essentials, treat 40,000 children for malnutrition and provide 1 million people with improved water supply and basic sanitation.

We are also actively encouraging international donors to urgently provide funding to the UN humanitarian response ahead of Yemen’s expected COVID-19 peak in late July.