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PRESS STATEMENT
ANTONY J. BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

The United States is providing more than $290 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the people of Yemen. I am grateful to all our partners who also announced contributions today, and I am proud that the United States continues to lead the humanitarian response to this crisis. The United States has provided nearly $806 million in humanitarian assistance to Yemen since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2021. In total, the United States has provided more than $4 billion to alleviate the suffering of the people of Yemen since the current crisis began in late 2014.

The assistance announced today includes nearly $209 million through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and nearly $82 million through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. It contributes to international humanitarian partners’ efforts to assist the 20 million people who rely on life-saving humanitarian assistance to survive, providing food, health, water, sanitation, hygiene, shelter, protection, and education for internally displaced and conflict-affected Yemenis, as well as for refugee populations and asylum seekers in Yemen. Our assistance also supports prevention and treatment of malnutrition, rehabilitation of water systems to provide safe drinking water, providing shelter supplies and hygiene items help keep people healthy and protect against COVID-19, and helping families earn an income and rebuild their livelihoods.

We commend the generous pledges made at today’s United Nations event, hosted by the EU, Sweden, and Switzerland. I urge all donors to fulfill these pledges as soon as possible. We also urge other countries to help fill critical funding shortfalls, particularly in the protection sector, including child protection, mine action, and gender-based violence prevention and response.

The United States remains committed to delivering aid to the most vulnerable in Yemen, and calls for an end to obstructions and bureaucratic hurdles. We continue to call on the Yemeni Government, Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis to do their part to ensure that fuel is flowing into and throughout Yemen at prices Yemenis can afford, and to remove any obstacles or impediments to this end, so Yemeni civilians can access basic services and aid.

Humanitarian assistance makes a critical difference in people’s lives, but it alone cannot resolve this crisis. The United States remains committed to an inclusive, UN-led peace process to achieve a durable resolution to the conflict for all Yemenis. Senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking, continue to work closely with the United Nations and key regional and international partners to build on the unprecedented international consensus on the need to end the war. We call on all parties to engage without pre-conditions with new UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg and with each other, and to take meaningful steps to end a war which has gone on too long and has claimed too many lives. We have an opportunity to achieve peace in Yemen, and we must seize it.

For the latest updates on U.S. humanitarian assistance in Yemen, visit: https://www.usaid.gov/humanitarian-assistance/yemen