Jan 30, 2022: The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Sunday that it had documented cases where families in Yemen were forced to eat leaves to quell starvation in their war-torn country.

The WFP says hunger is growing in Yemen amid the Arab world’s “conflict and economic downturn.” The WFP said in a statement on Twitter with a picture of a Yemeni citizen cooking leaves, “Families in some of the worst-hit areas of Yemen, like Hajjah [northwest Yemen], are resorting to desperate measures like eating leaves to survive.”

Last month, the UN human rights body said it would cut food aid to war-torn Yemen by January due to a lack of funding. According to the WFP, more than 16 million Yemenis, half of the country’s population, suffer from severe hunger, while 2.3 million children are at risk of malnutrition. Yemen has been plagued by violence and instability since 2014, when Iranian-linked Houthi rebels seized much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

A Saudi-led coalition aimed at reinstating the Yemeni government has worsened the situation, causing one of the world’s worst human-made humanitarian crises, with nearly 80%, or about 30 million people, needing humanitarian assistance and protection and more than 13 million in danger of starvation, according to UN estimates.

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