Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, announced a $100 million grant to Yemen to improve food security on Wednesday, according to Qatar’s state news agency.
The money will be used through the United Nation’s World Food Programme “to support food security, help prevent famine and assist the United Nations’ relief and urgent humanitarian programmes to alleviate the exacerbation of the human tragedy in Yemen.”
“In April, I travelled to Doha to raise awareness to my friend Foreign Minister Al Thani the possibility of a major Qatari donation to address the Yemen famine. Tonight, at dinner, Qatar announced a historic $100M donation,” US Senator Chris Murphy tweeted on Thursday about the issue.
Yemen has been engulfed in violence for years, bringing the region’s poorest country even closer to starvation.
Since 2015, at least 233,000 Yemenis have been killed, with 131,000 of them dying from hunger, lack of healthcare, and medicine.
In Yemen, five million people are on the verge of starvation, according to the UN’s World Food Programme, with 50,000 currently living in famine-like conditions. Food costs have risen by 200% since pre-war levels, according to the organization, with 80 percent of Yemenis relying on foreign food help.
Yemen is currently experiencing the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe, according to the United Nations.
More than 16 million people are expected to go hungry this year as a result of the catastrophic conditions imposed on the country as a result of the ongoing war. 400,000 Yemeni children under the age of five are also thought to be at risk of dying from acute malnutrition.
