Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what urgent steps they intend to take with their international partners to try to avert the risk of catastrophic human suffering in Yemen.

The UK is extremely concerned by the devastating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which remains the largest in the world. This situation is now being compounded by the rapid spread of COVID-19, with UK-funded modelling estimating that Yemen has already had over 1 million infections.

In response, we are promptly disbursing funding from our new £160 million commitment for this financial year (2020/21), to help the UN tackle the spread of COVID-19 in Yemen and address the humanitarian crisis. We have already disbursed 32% of this funding and expect to have disbursed over 50% by the end of July.

We are encouraging other international donors to urgently provide funding to the UN humanitarian response, ahead of Yemen’s expected COVID-19 peak in late July. We are also engaging with Yemeni authorities to encourage them to implement measures to suppress infection, allow access for international staff and COVID-19 supplies and protect the health system.