Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-02-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government has taken to relieve food insecurity in (a) Taiz and (b) elsewhere in Yemen.

Mr Desmond Swayne

The UK has more than doubled its humanitarian commitment to Yemen over the last year to £85 million for 2015/16. This includes funding to the World Food Programme (WFP) and International Non-Governmental Organisations who provide emergency food to over 570,000 people, either through direct delivery of food or providing cash or vouchers to enable people to buy food. These distributions are prioritised to the areas of greatest need including the hardest to reach districts of Taiz. Just last week, UK funding helped WFP to deliver a month’s supply of food to 21,000 people in Taiz. UK funding to UNICEF is also treating over 150,000 children for severe acute malnutrition and we are funding the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) to improve the supply of essential commercial goods, including food, into Yemen.