Yemen

The civil war in Yemen broke out in 2014 when Houthi rebels, a Shia Islamist political and militant group, attacked and captured Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Backed by Iran, the Houthis aimed to topple President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his Sunni government and made quick progress. In January 2015, the Houthis had taken the presidential palace, forcing a resignation from Hadi and exiling him to Saudi Arabia. Being a Sunni state, Saudi Arabia supported Hadi and backed the coalition forces fighting to reinstall the former president’s government. Thus, what started out as a swift takeover for the Houthis turned into a bloody civil war. Saudi Arabia and the UAE carried out over twenty-five thousand air strikes in Yemen, causing over nineteen thousand civilian casualties and prompting retaliatory strikes from the Houthis.
                  Between 2015 and the start of 2022, an estimated 377,000 deaths were attributable, both directly and indirectly, to the civil war in Yemen. Presently, 4.5 million people remain internally displaced, and 21.6 million, two-thirds of the population, are in “dire need of assistance” according to the UN Refugee Agency. Three-quarters of the displaced are women and children. The Yemenis also face large-scale famine and economic collapse. 17.3 million people suffer from high levels of acute food insecurity, six million are on the brink of famine, and 2.2 million children under the age of five require treatment for acute malnutrition. Severe effects of climate change are also present in Yemen, as natural disasters, drought, and flooding force more people from their homes and exacerbate the preexisting issues.