In spring 2017, the United Nations described Yemen as the scene of the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Roughly two in every three Yemenis, about 18.8 million people, needed some form of aid or protection to get through the year. Hunger, a failing health system, mass displacement and a shortage of clean water were all feeding into one another, and the war driving them showed no sign of ending.
This page sets out what that crisis looked like in 2017, using figures published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and photographs taken for OCHA by Giles Clarke. It then explains how the war began, why the country came so close to famine, and how the situation has developed in the years since.
Yemen in 2017: the crisis in numbers
OCHA's 2017 appeal asked donors for US$2.1 billion to cover the most urgent needs. By the middle of April, only about 15% of that money had arrived. The gap mattered because nearly every other number in the country was moving in the wrong direction.
- People in need: about 18.8 million, around two-thirds of the population.
- Hunger: roughly 7 million people did not know where their next meal would come from, and about half of all young children were stunted.
- Displacement: close to 2 million people had been forced from their homes inside the country.
- Water: more than 8 million people lacked safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
- Children: aid agencies estimated that a child under five was dying of a preventable cause every ten minutes.
A health worker checks a small girl for signs of malnutrition in the village of An-Nassiri, about 60 km from the port city of Al Hudaydah. Quick body measurements like this let field teams spot children who need urgent treatment. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
How the war began
Yemen was already the poorest country in the Arab world before the fighting escalated. In September 2014 the Houthi movement, an armed group from the north of the country, took control of the capital, Sanaa. In January 2015 Houthi fighters seized the presidential compound and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi resigned, later fleeing south to Aden and declaring the takeover illegitimate.
On 26 March 2015 a coalition led by Saudi Arabia began air strikes in support of Hadi's government. From that point the conflict became a regional one, with ground fighting on many fronts, a heavy bombing campaign and tight restrictions on what could enter the country by sea and air.
When aid workers called the crisis "man-made", they meant that no drought or earthquake caused it. According to OCHA's figures at the time, more than 7,000 people had been killed and over 42,000 injured in the two years after the escalation. Air strikes and front-line fighting had wrecked roads, bridges, factories and markets, and the economic damage pushed a fragile state towards collapse.
A father and his sons walk beneath a bridge that was damaged in the fighting, on their way to fetch water. Broken infrastructure turned simple daily tasks into long and sometimes dangerous journeys. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
A boy rolls a tyre along a street lined with destroyed houses. Children made up a large share of those who lost homes, schooling and family members during the war. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Hunger and a health system near collapse
By 2017 Yemen faced the world's largest food security emergency. Food was often on sale in the markets, but prices had climbed while incomes collapsed, so millions of families could not afford it. Stunting, when a child is too short for their age because of long-term undernutrition, affected around one child in two. It is largely irreversible after the first few years of life, which is why aid agencies treat it as a warning about the country's future, not just its present.
Three-year-old Kholod sits on a hospital bed soon after being admitted to the children's ward of Al Thawra Hospital. Hospitals like this one received a steady stream of children with severe malnutrition and infections. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Hospitals were struggling to cope. Supplies of medicines and equipment were running dangerously low, and many doctors and nurses kept working for little or no pay. Reportedly only around half of health facilities were still fully working. When clinics close or cannot afford fuel for generators, illnesses that are easy to treat, such as diarrhoea and pneumonia, become deadly for small children.
Saleh, four months old, weighed just 2.5 kg when he was brought to hospital with severe acute malnutrition. A healthy baby of that age would usually weigh more than twice as much. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
A mother and father watch over their premature twins at As-Sabaeen Hospital in Sanaa. Neonatal units depended on electricity, oxygen and trained staff, all of which were in short supply. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Displacement, water and cholera
Around 2 million Yemenis had fled their homes by 2017. Most stayed inside the country, sheltering in schools, public buildings, relatives' homes or makeshift camps where clean water, toilets and health care were hard to reach.
More than 400 families live in this informal settlement for internally displaced people in Khamir, north of Sanaa. Shelters are built from tarpaulins, scrap and whatever families could carry with them. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Ibtissam, 15, made the journey to Khamir with her seven younger brothers and sisters after both of their parents died. Older children often became the heads of households in the camps. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Water was one of the most serious problems. With more than 8 million people lacking safe drinking water and sanitation, the conditions were ideal for disease. OCHA warned of outbreaks of cholera, dengue and scabies. The warning proved accurate: a cholera outbreak that began in October 2016 grew in 2017 into what the UN later called the worst epidemic in recorded history. By late 2021 Yemen had recorded more than 2.5 million suspected cases and more than 4,000 deaths.
Children carry plastic water containers through a camp for displaced families in Khamir, around 100 km north of Sanaa. Fetching water was often a child's job, taking hours away from school and play. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Why imports and Hodeidah port matter
Yemen imports between 80% and 90% of its staple food, as well as most of its fuel and medicine. That makes the country unusually exposed to anything that slows ships, closes ports or raises shipping costs. The Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah (often spelled Hodeidah) was the main entry point for supplies to the north, where most of the population lives, and OCHA described it as a lifeline for around 60% of food-insecure Yemenis. In 2017 it was working well below capacity.
Damaged cranes at Al Hudaydah port, out of action since mid-2015. Without them, ships took far longer to unload, and every delay added cost to food and fuel. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
A dock worker at Al Hudaydah. The port employed more than 20,000 people, so its slowdown hit local jobs as well as national supplies. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
A fish seller in Al Hudaydah shows a small hammerhead shark for sale. Fishing communities along the coast also lost income as boats were damaged and fuel prices rose. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Fuel is the part of the import chain people often overlook. Diesel runs water pumps, hospital generators and the trucks that carry food inland. When fuel imports fall, the price of water and transport rises, and the effects show up quickly in clinics and nutrition centres.
Women, girls and older people
Crises like Yemen's do not affect everyone equally. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) reported that gender-based violence, already common before the war, had risen by more than 63% since 2015, leaving an estimated 2.6 million women and girls at risk. Abuse and forced marriage were among the dangers aid agencies highlighted, with poverty pushing some families to marry off daughters early.
A young girl in An-Nassiri, a small farming village about 60 km from Al Hudaydah. Rural families far from towns had the hardest time reaching clinics and aid distributions. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
A 90-year-old woman, who is blind, sits inside her home in An-Nassiri. Elderly and disabled people often could not flee fighting or walk to distribution points without help. Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA
Aid, funding and what has happened since
About 120 aid organisations were working in Yemen in 2017, around 80 of them Yemeni groups, and together they reached millions of people with food, water, health care and shelter. Their two constant problems were money and access: appeals were badly underfunded, and checkpoints, fighting and paperwork kept teams away from some of the people in greatest need.
Displaced families collect mattresses, blankets, kitchen sets and buckets at an aid distribution point in Mokha, on the Red Sea coast. Basic household kits like these are often the first help people receive after fleeing. Photo: UNHCR
The crisis grew far deeper after 2017. A study for the UN Development Programme, reported in November 2021, projected that the war would have caused about 377,000 deaths by the end of that year, around 60% of them from indirect causes such as hunger and disease rather than combat. A UN-brokered nationwide truce in April 2022 brought the first real pause in fighting, and although it formally expired that October, large-scale fighting stayed lower for some time.
Other pressures soon followed. From late 2023 Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea drew US and British strikes and further disrupted trade routes. Divisions within the anti-Houthi camp turned violent in late 2025 and early 2026, and violence has continued since. When the UN and its partners launched their 2026 plan on 18 March 2026, they estimated that 22.3 million people needed humanitarian assistance and protection, 18.3 million faced acute food insecurity, more than 2.2 million children under five were acutely malnourished and 5.2 million people were internally displaced. They asked for US$2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.
Two lessons from 2017 still hold. First, famine conditions in modern wars are rarely caused by a lack of food on the planet; they come from collapsed incomes, blocked imports and broken services. Second, funding and access decide how many people aid can reach. Reliable organisations working in Yemen include UN agencies such as WFP, UNICEF and UNHCR, and long-established groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.
Sources: OCHA, "9 facts about Yemen" (2017), with photographs by Giles Clarke for OCHA and one by UNHCR; Wikipedia: Yemeni civil war (2014–present); Wikipedia: 2016–2022 Yemen cholera outbreak; Al Jazeera, 23 November 2021: UNDP projection of 377,000 war deaths; ReliefWeb (UN OCHA), 18 March 2026: Yemen humanitarian appeal for 2026.
Related:
COMMENTS