Why does Sanaa insist on replacing aid in-kind with cash?

Since the first days of the war on Yemen, international organizations, including the World Food Program (WFP), have entered Yemen under the pretext of humanitarian action and to help the Yemeni people.

From that time until today, nothing has been changed in the humanitarian file in Yemen, and the humanitarian situation is getting worse.

The United Nations’ reports confirm that 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation, and 11 million are at risk of dying from epidemics, while 20 million Yemenis need health care and food.

In front of these numbers, the following questions arise:

Where did the billions of dollars obtained by international organizations in the name of humanitarian action in Yemen go during the past years?

What is the benefit of the work of these organizations? And why does Sanaa insist on converting humanitarian aid into cash?

From the figures revealed by the UN reports, it has become clear that international organizations and the WFP have not performed their humanitarian duty in Yemen as they should.

Instead of assisting the Yemeni people, these international organizations have invested in Yemenis’ suffering and merchandised in their pain over the past five years to earn more money, and they gave them only crumbs.

The corruption of international organizations and the WFP in Yemen has become clear for everyone, especially since many of local media have revealed, in documented reports, the corruption of these organizations which looted billions of dollars under the names of operating expenses, transport fares, and others, in addition to tampering with aid and distributing rotten food to the Yemeni citizens.

In order to face this great corruption in the work of these organizations, Sanaa had to take measures to reduce this corruption and manipulation, stop these organizations from trading in the suffering of the Yemeni people, and ensure that aid reach those who deserve them.

Among those measures taken by Sanaa is to press those organizations to convert this humanitarian aid into cash assistance and replacing food aid with cash.

According to economic experts, this mechanism will solve the imbalance, as the distribution of aid in cash means that there are no longer operating expenses, except to a minimum, and no store rents, nor transportation fees.

This will be in the interest of the citizens, as most of the budget allocated for humanitarian aid will go to them, which allows access to the largest number of beneficiaries, in addition to not obliging the citizen to certain food items that often moldy.

YPA