An independent review by the Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation (IAHE) has branded the UN’s approach to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis “unacceptably poor.”

Released on 19 July, their evaluation of the UN’s work in Yemen since the start of the Saudi-led invasion said it was inefficient due to their failure to provide enough supplies for Yemenis.

The UN have also been criticized for not providing proper infrastructure for the millions displaced over the years.

Yemen has been at war with the Saudi-led coalition since 2015, in a conflict that has caused over 377,000 deaths and displaced over four million.

The Saudi-led coalition is also blamed for hindering the access of aid workers to Yemen, even after the implementation of the UN-brokered ceasefire on 2 April.

The IAHE outlined how the “conservative security posture” used by the UN has led to “bunkerisation,” whereby aid workers are mostly confined to protection facilities, essentially having limited interactions with Yemenis who are at severe risk.

Last week, the spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Basheer Omar, described the humanitarian crisis in Yemen as an “unimaginable horror,” saying that two-thirds of Yemenis are deprived of basic healthcare.

This came a few weeks after the World Food Programme (WFP) announced a reduction in the food rations citing global inflation, funding gaps, and the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We are now being driven to scale back support for 5 million of those people to less than 50 percent of the daily requirement, and for the other 8 million to around 25 percent of the daily requirement.”

The WFP has been reducing rations since January, warning in May that it could make further cuts after raising only a quarter of the funds necessary for Yemen this year from international donors.