More than a quarter of the nearly 2,900 children examined by the United Nations children’s agency in recent weeks were suffering from acute malnutrition. Posted on September 25, 2026 September 25, 2026 Fighting in Yemen is disrupting access to health care and treatment facilities, causing a rise in acute malnutrition among children, the United Nations children’s agency said. UNICEF Representative in Yemen Akhil Iyer told reporters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on Friday that hunger and malnutrition are affecting an increasing number of children in Yemen, as violence in the country increases. Recommended stories list of 4 articlesend listIyer said 71,000 children were among the nearly 130,000 people displaced in Yemen over the past three weeks, most of whom were uprooted from or within the southwestern governorate of Taiz. “Conflict drives hunger, and hunger makes children more vulnerable to conflict,” Iyer told reporters by video conference from Aden. He added that UNICEF is “very concerned about a very visible increase in acute malnutrition among children.” UNICEF mobile teams screened nearly 2,900 children in accessible areas in recent weeks. More than a quarter were suffering from acute malnutrition, Iyer said, and 200 of them were They consider “severe”, the worst category. In addition to the increasing cases of child malnutrition in areas it can access, UNICEF said this was just a “snapshot of the situation developing across the country, where 2.2 million children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year, and more than half a million are expected to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.” 15 children have been killed and 14 injured in the conflict since early September, while three were still missing. “Beyond being uprooted from their homes, too many children have already paid the ultimate price in this conflict,” he said. “Behind each of those children is a parent experiencing the unimaginable: the pain, fear or agony of not knowing Yemen’s civil war between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and the Houthi-backed Houthis.” by Iran has intensified this year after being largely frozen in a 2022 truce. In recent weeks, the Houthis have made dramatic territorial gains against Yemen’s internationally recognized government forces. They seized the strategic port city of Mocha and then almost the entire Red Sea coast, including several islands. That has given the group greater control over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the critically important sea passage that Saudi Arabia was using to ship oil after. The escalation has also disrupted education in Yemen, with 243 schools closing. or suspending classes in the last three weeks, which affected almost 140,000 students the law and facilitate safe and unimpeded humanitarian access.
