Fresh Air

News that the terrorist group Ansar Allah (widely known as the Houthis) kidnapped another 20 United Nations employees in Yemen last week wasn’t just horrific for the individuals being held against their will – it was devastating for millions of hungry Yemeni civilians.

In February, the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) began suspending the delivery of essential humanitarian aid – including food, water and medical supplies – to areas under Houthi control, which is where some 70% of Yemen’s population lives. That’s at least 24 million men, women and children who have been left without any food aid.

The reason for the WFP’s decision is unfortunate but understandable: the Iran-backed Houthis had already kidnapped 40 UN workers (who remain in arbitrary detention), plus one staffer who passed away whilst in detention in February. The Houthis had also raided UN premises, and routinely seized UN property, including cars, furniture, and documents.

The WFP said the Houthis’ actions made delivering and distributing aid too difficult and, in February, suspended aid in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. In April, WFP extended its aid suspension to all areas controlled by the Houthis, after the WFP claimed the Houthis had looted a UN facility and stolen US$1.6 million in supplies.

At the time of publication, it has been at least nine months since vital humanitarian aid was last delivered to the overwhelming majority of Yemen’s civilians. The Houthis’ latest abduction of UN staffers on October 19, when Houthi terrorists raided a UN facility in Sanaa, occurred just one month after the European Union made an appeal for “all parties to the conflict” to end all impediments to aid being delivered. This latest development all but guarantees the UN’s ban on aid to Houthi-controlled areas will continue indefinitely. This is despite the fact that on Oct. 21, two days after the latest kidnapping, five of the detained UN employees were released, and the other 15 were said to be “free to move” and contact their families and colleagues.

Sadly, it is the Yemeni people who bear the cost of this decision. While UN staff cannot be faulted for not wanting to work in areas where their safety is constantly hostage to Houthi extremism and demands, and the UN is right to want to put pressure on the Houthis to release its employees, the consequence is that more than 10 million civilians will continue to go without vital access to food, water, and medical supplies for the foreseeable future.

It is notable that the global community, including world leaders, the media, human rights activists and humanitarian groups, has been almost completely silent about the UN’s decision and its impact on the Yemeni people. There has been no global outrage, outcry or demand that the UN reverse its decision. There have certainly been no demonstrations on the streets of Western cities denouncing the deprivation of Yemenis.  The very real impact on the Yemeni people is seemingly of no interest or concern to the world.

Contrast this with how these same groups, including the UN and WFP, reacted when the Israeli Government temporarily suspended aid to Gaza for nine weeks between March and May because the terrorist group Hamas was looting aid trucks and stealing from distribution centres. This was a reality attested to by multiple videos and the eyewitness testimony of Palestinians, and confirmed by the Palestinian Authority itself on more than one occasion.  In fact, data from the United Nations itself reveals that 88% of trucks carrying aid between May 9 and August 5 had been “intercepted” – that is, looted – before arriving at their destination.

But despite making the same decision, for similar reasons, the UN and WFP were among the loudest and most indignant voices against the Netanyahu Government. On May 1, the UN released a press release calling Israel’s aid suspension “cruel collective punishment” and stated that “blocking aid kills”.

Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in the same press release that the Israeli Government’s decision “starves civilians”, denies them basic medical services, and “strips them of dignity and hope.”

Moreover, the Israeli Government made its decision only after the IDF ensured that Gazans had five-months supply of food. There is no evidence that the WFP did anything similar before embargoing aid to Yemen.

This is far from the first time that the UN has suspended aid to parts of Yemen – again, without a word of backlash or protest. In 2019 to 2020, when the Houthis demanded a cut of the country’s multi-billion-dollar aid budget, which was denied, the UN cut off aid for six months.

At the time, Yemen was labelled the world’s worst humanitarian disaster not just because of the relentless war, but also because of multiple cholera, polio and dengue fever outbreaks since 2016, as well as the occurrence of natural disasters, such as multiple floods and cyclones, resulting in thousands of deaths.

The UN again paused aid to northern Yemen in 2023, which it admitted contributed to the worsening food situation – a rarity in UN documents and speeches.

“The food security situation in Yemen continued to deteriorate in January,” with 55% of households in southern Yemen and 51% in northern Yemen reporting inadequate food, the UN stated.

“The proportion of households in northern Yemen unable to meet minimum acceptable food consumption has now reached the highest recorded level in the past 16 months. This is largely associated with the ongoing pause in WFP food assistance in northern Yemen.”

Background: Yemen’s 11-year nightmare

Yemen is reportedly one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and yet is routinely ignored by the world. Of the country’s estimated 40 million population, approximately 4.5 million are internally displaced; more than half the population, or 18.2 million people, need humanitarian aid; 5.1 million suffer from acute food insecurity; and 3.5 million people are suffering from acute malnutrition.

The Houthis control the Yemeni people with draconian, Taliban-style laws that radically restrict women’s lives, including what they can wear. Women are also banned from travelling across different parts of the country without a male guardian. The Houthis routinely abduct and torture women, kill journalists, disappear people from religious minorities and political opponents, recruit child soldiers and conduct sniper attacks and siege warfare against civilians.

The Houthis, like Hamas, are part of Iran’s terror proxy network, which operates across the Middle East. It is therefore unsurprising that they employ tactics, such as looting aid and kidnapping,  that are common to this network.

The Houthis’ latest round of kidnappings, which they justified by claiming the UN workers were spies, is part of the terrorist group’s increasingly brazen actions that the UN recently warned could “trigger a return to full-scale conflict.”

Bizarrely, despite the horrific violence occurring across Yemen and severe lack of food – with an estimated one million Yemeni women, men, and children at risk of starvation – some people have managed to blame Israel for the deteriorating situation in the country.

A September 2025 report in the UK’s Telegraph claimed aid wasn’t getting into Yemen because “Israeli airstrikes on key Houthi-controlled ports have reignited Yemen’s internal fault lines, prompting anti-Houthi factions, including southern separatists, to escalate stalled battles.” The article failed to mention the fact that the UN stopped feeding millions of Yemeni people back in February – a direct cause of the increased risk of starvation – and that the only reason Israel has been militarily involved in Yemen is because the Houthis began firing missiles and drones into the country in October 2023, a campaign that was only suspended with the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

On Sept. 15, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, updated the UN Security Council. He not only made no mention of the fact that the UN had suspended aid nine months ago, but failed to speak up about the consequences of that suspension. He didn’t mention the humanitarian situation the Yemeni people continue to face at all.

There was no word of when aid might resume, and no glimmer of hope for the tens of millions who have gone without adequate food and other supplies for so long.

This is the UN not only being hypocritical but deceptive.