Yemen is starving because a decade-long civil war has destroyed the infrastructure needed to grow food and move it to people, while an economic collapse has made what food is available unaffordable for millions. As of mid-2025, over 17 million Yemenis, nearly half the country’s population, face crisis-level food insecurity or worse. Of those, 5.2 million are in emergency conditions, one step below famine. The causes are layered: war damage, water scarcity, currency collapse, port disruptions, and shrinking humanitarian aid all compound each other.
War Destroyed the Water and Farming Systems
Yemen was already one of the driest countries on Earth before the war began in 2014. The country receives an average of just 114 millimeters of rainfall per year, and 94% of that evaporates before it can be used. Less than 1% is retained as stored water. Farming depends almost entirely on capturing seasonal rain through dams, wells, and irrigation networks.
The conflict gutted that system. More than 45% of Yemen’s water infrastructure, including pumping stations, distribution networks, and dams, has been partially or completely destroyed. The deliberate targeting of small and medium-sized dams has been especially damaging, cutting off the ability to harvest rainwater in key agricultural regions like the Tihama coastal plain and the Wadi Hadramawt valley. Cultivated land around greater Sana’a has shrunk by a third because farmers simply can’t access enough water. Thousands of farming families have abandoned agriculture entirely, losing their primary income and deepening poverty across rural areas.
Most Food Must Be Imported, and That Pipeline Is Fragile
Yemen has long imported the vast majority of its food. The country simply doesn’t have the water or arable land to feed its population domestically, and the war made that gap far worse. That means ports are lifelines, and anything that disrupts shipping directly threatens survival.
The port of Al Hodeidah on the Red Sea coast has been the main entry point for food and fuel into northern Yemen, where most of the population lives. Since mid-2024, repeated attacks have reduced storage capacity at the port. A fuel import ban on entities linked to the Ansar Allah (Houthi) authorities took effect in April 2025, creating further uncertainty about supply chains in the north. The broader Red Sea shipping crisis has threatened to raise costs, delay deliveries, and potentially suspend trade routes altogether.
There are some bright spots in the logistics picture. Overall food imports through all Yemeni seaports rose 16% in early 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, driven largely by a 92% surge through the southern ports of Aden and Mukalla. But getting food into port is only half the problem. Getting it to people who can afford to buy it is the other half.
Currency Collapse Has Put Food Out of Reach
Yemen effectively operates with two economies. In areas controlled by the internationally recognized government in the south, the Yemeni riyal has been in freefall, averaging 2,628 to the US dollar in June 2025, a 32% drop from a year earlier. In northern areas controlled by the Sana’a-based authorities, the currency has held relatively steady at around 534 to the dollar, thanks to central bank interventions.
That southern currency collapse translates directly into hunger. The cost of a minimum food basket in government-controlled areas is now 37% higher than a year ago and 49% above the three-year average. In the north, food prices have risen more modestly, about 4% year-on-year. But even smaller price increases are devastating when incomes have vanished. Roughly 1.2 million civil servants across Yemen have received little to no salary for extended periods. Health workers, teachers, and government employees who once supported large extended families are now struggling to feed their own children.
Displacement Has Created Pockets of Extreme Hunger
The war has uprooted millions from their homes, and displaced families face the worst food conditions in the country. As of June 2025, nearly seven in ten internally displaced families reported they could not meet their basic food needs. Almost one in three displaced families were going an entire day without eating. These aren’t people who can farm, access markets easily, or draw on savings. They’ve lost everything and depend almost entirely on outside help.
Children Are Paying the Highest Price
Half of all Yemeni children under five are acutely malnourished. Among them, over 537,000 suffer from severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous form, where a child’s body begins consuming its own muscle and fat to survive. UNICEF has called the condition “agonizing, life-threatening, and entirely preventable.” A malnourished child is far more vulnerable to diseases like cholera and measles, both of which have surged in Yemen during the war, creating a cycle where illness worsens hunger and hunger worsens illness.
Humanitarian Aid Is Shrinking
For years, international food aid kept Yemen from tipping into outright famine. That safety net is fraying. The World Food Programme has faced severe funding constraints across its global operations, and Yemen is no exception. Financial restrictions tied to the designation of Ansar Allah as a foreign terrorist organization have complicated payment transactions to aid partners operating in northern Yemen, where most of the need is concentrated.
The pattern playing out in Yemen mirrors what’s happening in other hunger crises. In multiple countries facing mass food insecurity, WFP has been forced to cut rations, reduce the number of people it assists, or halt programs entirely due to funding gaps. In some operations globally, the agency expects to reach as little as 8% of its target population for emergency winter response. Yemen’s crisis is competing for donor attention alongside record hunger in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other emergencies, and the total pool of funding is not keeping pace.
Why All These Causes Reinforce Each Other
What makes Yemen’s hunger crisis so persistent is that none of these factors exist in isolation. Destroyed water infrastructure means less local food production, which means greater dependence on imports. Import dependence means currency strength matters enormously, but the war has split the economy and collapsed the riyal in the south. Displacement pulls people away from whatever farmland or employment they had, concentrating need in areas with the fewest resources. And when humanitarian funding shrinks, there is no backup system. The country produced too little food before the war. After a decade of destruction, it produces far less, while its population has continued to grow.
Yemen imports roughly 90% of its staple foods, a figure that predates the conflict but has only worsened as farmland shrinks and irrigation systems fail. Every link in the chain from international grain markets to a family’s kitchen table has been damaged: ports are under threat, roads are contested, fuel is restricted, currency is collapsing, salaries have stopped, and aid is being cut. The result is a country where food often exists in markets but millions of people simply cannot access it.