Yemen ‘not on brink of catastrophe, it is a catastrophe’

The Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths said that the country is at “a crucial moment”, while speaking at a UN Security Council meeting in New York City on Friday.

Griffiths said he has “received firm assurances from the leadership of the Yemeni parties – the Government of Yemen and then Ansar Allah – that they are committed to attending these consultations.”

“I believe they are genuine and I expect them to continue in that way and to appear for those consultations and indeed so do the Yemeni people, who are desperate for a political solution to a war in which they are the main victims,” he added.

The Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) David Beasley called what he had seen this week in Yemen “the stuff of nightmares, of horror, of deprivation, of misery.”

“This country of 28, 29 million people has been suffering for years, but now, as some would say, it is on the brink of catastrophe. But it is not on the brink of catastrophe, it is a catastrophe,” he said.