Escalating violence in Hodeidah, Yemen, threatens the city's estimated 90,000 pregnant women and girls, UNFPA has announced. Some 14,000 of these women and girls are likely to encounter pregnancy-related complications requiring emergency care, but access to health services has been severely limited by the ongoing crisis.
IBB, Yemen - Last year, Ayisha was married at only 13 years old. She delivered a baby several weeks ago - a girl. "My family forced me to get married and took me out of school," she told UNFPA while recuperating from childbirth. She was crying; the new reality of her situation weighed heavily on her.
A year of conflict in Yemen has left an estimated 3.4 million women of reproductive age between 15 and 49 years in need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has reported, expressing growing concern about the situation.
Three of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the world are in the Arab Region. Five of the countries in the regions-Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Palestine-are going through open or protracted conflicts. Many more countries are dealing with the consequences of these conflicts with a constant influx of refugees and an alarming rise of violent extremism.
An upsurge in global conflicts and brutal war tactics continues to make children extremely vulnerable to recruitment and use by armed groups, the United Nations warned today, appealing to the international community to take greater responsibility for the boys and girls used as child soldiers or risk failing to protect them.