Growing Up in Yemen’s Conflict: Children are Losing Basic Human Rights

More than half a million children under five in Yemen are projected to need treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) this year. The money to treat them is not there: by August, nutrition funding covered only 9% of requirements, leaving about US$161 million unmet. Meanwhile the health, water, and school services, that keep children alive and learning are shrinking, and no published figure we reviewed shows how many children are going untreated.

Missing Services

Mathurin Napoly

In recent weeks, UNICEF and WHO have both reported that renewed conflict is adding pressure to a health system that was already under severe strain, with only around 60% of health facilities fully functional. WHO reports the number of partner-supported health facilities has fallen by 63% since last year, and the number of people reached by 87%. By 16 September, fighting had disrupted services at 26 of the facilities UNICEF supports. Marib General Hospital temporarily suspended maternity and obstetric services as demand for trauma care rose. Yet, a facility that works only partly cannot offer everything a sick child needs.

Humanitarian targets for water and sanitation are falling behind. Between January and July, partners reached about 1.6 million people against an annual target of 6.3 million, and sanitation and hygiene support each reached only about a fifth of their targets. The WASH cluster estimates that 14.4 million people need assistance, more than twice the number of humanitarian targets. Covering adults as well as children, these figures show the response falling behind, not the number of children lacking safe water.

Schools are closing too. As of September 2026, 243 schools had closed or suspended learning, affecting about 137,000 students. That’s on top of 3.2 million school-aged children who were already out of school before the latest escalation.

The need in Yemen is clear

More than 2.2 million children under five in Yemen are acutely malnourished in 2026, including around 500,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), according to the World Food Programme. The same assessment puts the number of people facing acute food insecurity nationwide at 18.3 million. These are estimates of the scale of need, not a measured national treatment rate. Independent Yemeni analysis shows how quickly household conditions have deteriorated. The Sana’a Center reported in July that severe food deprivation had affected 36% of households in May, while inadequate food consumption had reached 62% nationwide. Around one in ten households in areas controlled by the Sana’a authorities, and 8% in government-controlled areas, said at least one family member had gone an entire day and night without eating. The Center linked the deterioration to higher prices, falling purchasing power, and reductions in humanitarian assistance.

More recent Yemeni reporting points in the same direction, the source reported that inadequate food consumption rose to 64% of households in June, compared with 59% in April, while severe food deprivation reached 36%. These household figures cover all age groups, but they help explain the conditions in which child malnutrition is worsening. Yemen Future also documents the human consequences of the latest escalation, reporting in late September that severe acute malnutrition among children was rising as fighting made access to healthcare and treatment centres more difficult. It separately reported that more than 60,000 children had been displaced in two weeks of renewed hostilities.

Missing Money

The 2026 humanitarian response plan for Yemen required about US$2.2 billion. By 10 August it had received about US$434 million, or 20%. This leaves US$1.7 billion unmet. The sectors children depend on fared no better:

Funding snapshot, 10 August. Source: OCHA.

The wider trend is confirmed outwith OCHA reporting. The Sana’a Center described Yemen in July as facing its worst humanitarian funding gap in a decade and noted that less than 20% of the requested funding for 2026 had been secured by late June. It also reported that funding shortages had already contributed to reducing the number of beneficiaries of WFP food assistance in government-controlled areas from 3.4 million to 1.7 million.

The gap has not disappeared as needs have risen. In October, WFP said it needed US$109 million to provide emergency food and nutrition assistance to as many as 1.5 million people affected by the latest escalation, plus another US$158 million to maintain regular food, cash, nutrition and school-meal operations for 2.4 million people through March 2027. These figures cannot be added together to estimate how many children are without assistance. Sector budgets overlap, programmes serve adults as well as children, and one child may need nutrition, health, water and education support at the same time.

How the losses compound for Yemeni Children

Max Bender

Malnutrition rarely results from lack of food alone. Families also need enough income to buy food, safe water to prevent disease, functioning health services, and continued access to treatment.

Save the Children’s 2026 evaluation of its Yemen nutrition programme found that combining cash assistance with nutrition support improved food consumption, dietary practices and hygiene and helped children maintain nutritional recovery after treatment. The findings underline why treatment alone may not be enough when poverty continues to push families back towards hunger. OCHA identifies disease outbreaks, unsafe water, limited healthcare and inadequate feeding as barriers to receiving or absorbing nutrients. WHO recorded 6,625 suspected cholera cases and 8 deaths between 1 January and 9 August, across all ages.

The latest escalation is adding another layer of pressure. Save the Children warned in September that renewed violence threatened an already fragile health system for children, as the escalation has damaged health facilities, disrupted aid delivery, and displaced nearly 94,000 people, exacerbating an already critical health crisis with surging infectious diseases and catastrophic humanitarian needs. Two days later, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that hospitals were facing an influx of war-wounded patients alongside critical shortages of medical supplies.

Services are reaching some children, but not enough

Some new support is arriving.

A programme announced in September will provide medicines, equipment and specialised treatment through 35 nutritional care centres for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition with medical complications.

Food and nutrition programmes are also continuing where access allows. WFP reached almost 1.3 million people in government-controlled areas during August. This included nutrition support for 73,352 children, pregnant women and breastfeeding women and girls. Of these, 50,912 received support for moderate acute malnutrition and 22,440 received preventive nutrition assistance. These figures show actual programme reach, but they cover only WFP activities in areas where it was operating and cannot be compared directly with the national SAM caseload.

Education programmes provide another example of services continuing under pressure. A consortium led by the Norwegian Refugee Council with CARE and Yemen’s Nahda Makers Organization supported more than 28,700 students in vulnerable communities in Taiz and Al Hodeidah through a US$3 million (Education Cannot Wait-funded project). The work included support for out-of-school children, girls and children with disabilities, as well as school rehabilitation and learning support.

This matters because the crisis is not only about whether a service technically exists. A clinic without medicines, a school without teachers or enough space, or a water system that operates intermittently may remain open while providing much less than children need.

The Missing Story

The numbers tell a story, but not the whole one. No current national figure shows how many Yemeni children with severe acute malnutrition are admitted for treatment, finish it or recover, and no current national survey measures how far malnutrition has worsened. What exists is patchy. Some figures cover the whole country, others only government-controlled areas, accessible districts or a single programme, and the latest fighting has pushed families out of reach and made access harder still. A projected caseload shows how big the need could be, and a programme report shows how many one organisation reached, but neither show how many children are being missed. Safe water and schooling have the same blind spots, with no current child-specific national water figure and counts of closed, damaged, or out-of-school children that cannot be compared.

Missing data does not mean small gaps. It means the true scale of what Yemen’s children have lost cannot yet be seen, and the children outside the count are the easiest to forget.

Thomas Foertsch

What must happen now

Yemen’s children are facing more than hunger. The systems that let a child recover are weakening all at once: clinics, nutrition treatment, safe water, what a family can afford to buy, and school. The evidence now comes from far beyond the UN. Yemeni research organisations are recording falling household food consumption, local media are reporting rising malnutrition and displacement, international NGOs describe health and education systems barely coping, the ICRC is refilling depleted medical stocks, and WFP is moving resources forward for immediate needs while warning that money for future operations is running short.

Activists Without Borders calls on donor governments to increase funding for nutrition, health, water and education in Yemen, and to give it early enough that services keep running instead of closing first. We call on everyone with influence over access to let aid workers, medical supplies and essential services reach communities across the country. And we call on donors and humanitarian organisations to publish clearer figures on treatment coverage, because knowing that more than half a million children may need treatment for severe acute malnutrition matters, but knowing how many actually receive and finish it is how the gap becomes visible. Yemen’s children should not have to wait for the next emergency threshold to be seen.

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