A letter to the UN concerning the situation in Yemen
We the undersigned urge you to spare no effort to bring the warring sides in Yemen to implement an immediate ceasefire for humanitarian and political purposes
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
United Nations
New York, NY 10017
United States
bkm@un.org
Wedensday 27 May 2015
Dear Secretary General,
We wish to draw your attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen.
Since the statement of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen of 4 May 2015 in which he called on the Saudi-led coalition to cease its bombing of Sana'a airport so that aid could enter the country warplanes have continued to bombard towns and cities across the country.
The coalition has ignored those calls and in fact intensified its military campaign. In recent days it has declared the whole of Saada a military target forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee the city. However many more people remain trapped, unable to escape.
This declaration amounts to collective punishment as it is disproportionate in scale and fails to distinguish between military targets and the sanctity of civilians and civilian infrastructure, which amounts to a war crime.
The statement of Johannes Van Der Klaauw referred to the impossibility of aid agencies getting emergency medical assistance and personnel into the country when the airports, the country's main lifelines, are being bombed by coalition warplanes. This is having a critical effect on the civilian population.
As you are aware the crisis has reached dire proportions. According to the UN's own estimates about nine million Yemenis, over a third of the population, are believed to be in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and hundreds of thousands have become internal refugees......................
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