{"id":46181,"date":"2022-03-16T09:52:18","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=46181"},"modified":"2022-03-16T09:52:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:52:18","slug":"secretary-antony-j-blinken-virtual-remarks-at-the-un-hosted-high-level-yemen-pledging-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=46181","title":{"rendered":"Secretary Antony J. Blinken Virtual Remarks at the UN-Hosted High-Level Yemen Pledging Event"},"content":{"rendered":"
03\/16\/2022 12:01 PM EDT<\/div>\n
\n

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n

Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

SECRETARY BLINKEN:<\/b>\u00a0 President Cassis, thank you very much.\u00a0 It\u2019s very good to see you today via video.\u00a0 To Secretary-General Guterres, Ant\u00f3nio, thank you for bringing us together.\u00a0 Under Secretary Griffiths, thank you for the work you and your team are doing every single day, not only in Yemen but quite literally around the world.\u00a0 And to my friend Ann Linde as well, thank you for everything you\u2019re doing in leading this conference.\u00a0 And I do want to say as well a special note of thanks to Special Envoy Jolie for doing something that\u2019s so important, which is actually putting the focus on what this is all about \u2013 the men, the women, the children who are affected in so many ways by this ongoing crisis in Yemen.<\/p>\n

And I hope that each of us just takes a minute as we\u2019re thinking about this, thinking about our responsibilities, to try to put ourselves in their shoes, to imagine if this was your son or your daughter, your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, and think about what that actually means and maybe find some additional motivation to continue to take action.\u00a0 As Martin said at the outset and as others have said, we\u2019re faced with a multiplicity of challenges around the world, and it\u2019s particularly difficult when the spotlight has moved elsewhere.\u00a0 That\u2019s when the real test comes.\u00a0 Can we keep our focus?\u00a0 Can we keep our engagement?\u00a0 Can we keep our determination?\u00a0 Can we run and chew gum at the same time?\u00a0 That\u2019s what we have to do here, because once again, we are meeting at what is a dire time for Yemen.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve heard the numbers.\u00a0 I won\u2019t repeat all of them, but again, just to emphasize, two out of three Yemenis require humanitarian assistance for basic necessities.\u00a0 That includes more than 17 million Yemenis who need food assistance, a number that, as we\u2019ve heard, is expected to rise to 19 million in the second half of 2022.\u00a0\u00a0 The number of Yemenis facing famine conditions is predicted to increase fivefold to over 160,000, and right now, more than 2 million children suffer from life-threatening malnutrition.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve heard, again, people pay witness to that.<\/p>\n

And yet, even as humanitarian needs in Yemen are rising, contributions are falling.\u00a0 Funding shortfalls have already forced the UN to close or reduce two-thirds of its critical humanitarian programs in the country.\u00a0 Food rations for 8 million Yemenis have been significantly reduced.\u00a0 Without a significant surge in resources, those reduced rations will be eliminated entirely in the coming months, and again, I ask each of us to think about what that actually means in human terms.\u00a0 If that\u2019s not enough, the Russian Government\u2019s unprovoked aggression in Ukraine threatens a significant source of Yemen\u2019s imported wheat.\u00a0 Just in the first week of this month alone, in March, many Yemenis saw bread prices shoot up 50 percent.<\/p>\n

So to help meet the urgent needs, today the United States is announcing nearly $585 million in new humanitarian aid to Yemen.\u00a0 That brings the total we\u2019ve provided since the outset of the conflict to about $4.5 billion.\u00a0 This is important.\u00a0 It\u2019s important for all of us to step up, but there are other things that are vital if we\u2019re actually going to deal with the challenge that people are facing in Yemen.\u00a0 To prevent a humanitarian catastrophe from fully unfolding, more support as needed, not just from us but from others.\u00a0 And we welcome the commitments made today by other donors.\u00a0 We urge everyone to step up, to do their part.<\/p>\n

But as others have said, the humanitarian support is one side of the equation.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t work fundamentally in the absence of peace, in the absence of a resolution.\u00a0 So we have to work relentlessly to bring the conflict to an end, knowing that as long as it goes on so will the humanitarian crisis.\u00a0 We can mitigate it, we can reduce it, we can address it, but in order to really deal with it, we have to have peace.\u00a0 It\u2019s as basic and as simple as that.\u00a0 Absent that, misery will continue; suffering will continue.\u00a0 We all know that.\u00a0 So we have to redouble our efforts there too as well.<\/p>\n

To that end, the United States strongly supports UN Special Envoy Grundberg\u2019s efforts to launch a more inclusive, comprehensive peace process that will improve the lives of Yemenis and allow them to collectively determine their own future.\u00a0 Our Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking is working to support that effort, including in his travel to Yemen and the Gulf over the past couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

The first step toward resolution is de-escalation, and yet here too, in recent months, we have seen just the opposite.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we condemn the escalating attacks by the Houthis, including cross-border attacks in January that killed civilians in the United Arab Emirates, wounded civilians in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 It\u2019s why we continue to work to help strengthen the defense of our Saudi and Emirati partners.\u00a0 It\u2019s also why we call on all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law, stop attacks on civilians, stop attacks on civilian infrastructure.\u00a0 Humanitarian assistance has to be allowed to flow into Yemen through all entry points throughout the country, freely, without interruption.\u00a0 And attacks on the staff of humanitarian organizations have to stop immediately.\u00a0 Every country has a responsibility to bring pressure to bear so that life-saving aid can actually get to those who need it.<\/p>\n

For all the suffering that\u2019s been wrought by this conflict, I have to say that it\u2019s also demonstrated the remarkable heart, the remarkable courage of the Yemeni people.\u00a0 There\u2019s so many individual examples of this.\u00a0 Some of them come to the fore through the spotlight that people like the special envoy bring to this, the media in its efforts to report what\u2019s going on.\u00a0 But I\u2019m thinking of people like Ameen Jubran, who co-founded Jeel Albena, an organization that aids displaced Yemenis.\u00a0 The group\u2019s motto is: by Yemenis, for Yemenis.\u00a0 It\u2019s built more than 18,000 emergency shelters for displaced families.<\/p>\n

To Ameen, a mean a shelter is more than a roof.\u00a0 Here\u2019s how he put it:\u00a0 If they have adequate shelter, it protects the family\u2019s dignity.\u00a0 This is something that he knows intimately.\u00a0 Like so many of his colleagues, he and his family have been displaced multiple times since the conflict began.\u00a0 And yet, they continue to risk their lives in some of the most dangerous parts of Yemen to help others live with dignity.<\/p>\n

So we have to do all we can to ensure that the United Nations and countless groups like Ameen\u2019s can actually continue their life-saving work in Yemen.\u00a0 That\u2019s what today is all about, and even as we do that, we have to redouble our efforts to finally \u2013 finally \u2013 bring peace to this country. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

03\/16\/2022 12:01 PM EDT Antony J....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46182,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46181\/revisions\/46182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}