One of the worst humanitarian crises erupted in Yemen in 2011 when the Yemeni people participated in the Arab Spring, a movement in which many Arab countries revolted against their authoritarian governments.
This quickly turned into a civil war that eventually led to Saudi and Emirati interference, which has resulted in 4.5 million Yemeni civilians internally displaced.
“People need to start looking into it and understand that Yemeni people are known to be really kind individuals. They don’t think about themselves just because of what they’ve gone through. They’ve gone through so much and they’ve seen a lot, and yet they still find it in their hearts to be giving towards others,” Zainab Al Mutawakel, who was born in Yemen, said.
Al Mutawakel is now a sophomore biomedical engineering student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is currently studying abroad in Cyprus for the semester.
In 2010, she, along with her parents and siblings, traveled to Egypt for her father’s job and remained there as the crisis started escalating. They moved around from Egypt, to Malaysia and to Canada, before finally moving to the United States in 2019.
“It’s been really hard trying to find a place to settle,” she said. “Just because we’re always moving around, it never really feels like home, especially since there’s not a lot of family around. It’s just my siblings and my parents. I have over 50 first cousins and I’ve forgotten a bunch of their names, so I feel very disconnected from my home.”
Many of Al Mutawakel’s family members remain in Yemen. “We know our family has been struggling a lot. We always watch the news, and it’s really bad especially since I don’t think there is any incoming income. Making money there is very, very hard because of the blockade,” she said, referring to the Saudi-led naval blockade that restricts imported food to the “Houthi-controlled north” of Yemen according to the World Organisation Against Torture.
The Houthis are “a group of Shia [Muslims] who had felt marginalized unfairly from prior political participation,” according to Department Chair and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy David Mednicoff.
In 2014, the Houthis overthrew the Yemeni government and took over the capital of Sana’a. In 2015, Yemen’s northern bordering country, Saudi Arabia, sent troops and bombs to attempt to remove the Houthis from power.
“What started as the unraveling of an authoritarian government in 2011 turned into a civil war in 2014 that blew up very rapidly into a regional conflict in Yemen,” Mednicoff said.
“[The crisis is] not getting a lot of attention right now at all other than ‘the Houthis, whoever they are, launched a missile.’ That’s the way it gets reported,” said Mednicoff.
The humanitarian crisis has resulted in over 233,000 deaths; a majority of which are due to indirect causes such as hunger, dehydration, disease and lack of healthcare according to the United Nations Department of Operational Support
About two-thirds of the Yemeni population, 21.6 million people, are in dire need of humanitarian aid. According to the World Food Program USA, 17.6 million people are considered “extremely hungry,” which makes acute malnutrition a major problem, especially amongst children.
The current water network in Yemen reaches only 30 percent of the population leaving 17.8 million without access to clean water according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. These issues of water accessibility have led to a major outbreak of cholera with 2.5 million cases reported and over 4,000 deaths.
A ceasefire was agreed upon in 2022, but the Yemeni people continue to live in awful conditions.
“Traveling is horrendous there. The airport has been blocked or hasn’t even been open, multiple times now. The main one was recently open, but it was bombed again,” Al Mutawakel said, referring to the Israeli bombing of the airport.
“Even if it was open, there’s only one plane that flies and it’s extremely, extremely expensive to even get a plane ticket. So since they don’t have income, they can’t even try to get out.”
“And if you have a Yemeni passport, it’s insanely hard to get a Visa. We have one of the worst passports. People are just stuck there and trying to survive,” Al Mutawakel continued.
“We really need people to think about world issues that they might not see. And we really need people to think about world issues that are a little hard to understand,” Mednicoff said. “Especially because this isn’t a moment when there’s just a lot of disinformation, but a lot of efforts to keep people focused away from caring about less advantaged people in the world. I think that there’s a real effort from this current [U.S. administration] to take us away from concern for vulnerable populations.”
Al Mutawakel is possibly the sole Yemeni student at UMass. The Office of University Analytics and Institutional Research confirmed that, “Based on citizenship of all our students, there was indeed only [one] student with Yemeni citizenship enrolled in the fall 2024 semester.”
Speaking of her experience being able to attend university, she said, “The guilt is always there knowing that people don’t even have the opportunity to have education and see their potential. But the way I think of it is that if I strive for a good education and a good job, it’s my way of giving back and representing the Yemeni people and to show individuals that we are very much hard workers and want to contribute to society.”
“The news outlets don’t really talk about [the crisis]. I don’t know why, it’s a really big deal,” Al Mutawakel said. “I just wish people would spread awareness about the humanitarian crisis and make it more of a priority to help these people, because they literally can’t do anything. They’re just trying to survive.”
Norah Stewart can be reached at [email protected]
