Crisis watch

Yemen

With 14 million children, women and men – half the country’s population – on the brink of famine, Johan Mooij, Yemen Country Director, said:

People ask me what the humanitarian situation will be if Hodeidah city is besieged and routes out of Hodeidah are cut off. My answer is simple: it will be a disaster.

The world has just woken up to the fact that Yemen is a crisis on a scale that most of us have never seen. Whether or not famine is officially announced, people are starving, and it will be too late to save the countless thousands who have already died.

This entirely man-made crisis needs to end. The parties to the conflict need to stop fighting, and they need to stop now. The Yemeni people deserve an end to all this. They deserve peace and hope.

CARE Yemen is currently reaching about one million people every month. The majority of our aid operations are outside Hodeidah but the fighting could limit access and delivery of aid, as well as affecting civilians and the movement of internally displaced people.

• Read the joint INGO statement on the escalation of fighting in Hodeidah
• Read more about the situation on the IRIN News website: Deaths before data: How war, politics, and a lack of reliable information are complicating a famine declaration in Yemen

Ethiopia

Despite the general good performance of this year’s belg/spring rains, the number of people targeted for food relief food and cash support remains largely unchanged at 7.9 million, due to the significant spike in internal displacement since April 2018.

CARE has activities planned in the food, shelter, and WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) sectors with a total target of 942,186 people. Our response so far has reached 641,890 people.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Several health zones across the North Kivu and Ituri provinces in Eastern DRC are continuing to report confirmed and suspected cases of the Ebola virus, with the response hampered by ongoing conflict in the affected areas. CARE’s response focuses on infection prevention and control, including providing hygiene kits, at the household, community, health centre levels, and schools.

• Read an update from Dr Eric Mukama, CARE health coordinator in the DRC, published on the Guardian website: We're in constant fear of armed attack as we treat Ebola patients in Congo

Uganda

One of the biggest biometric verification processes ever undertaken has confirmed that Uganda is hosting 1.1 million refugees, by far the largest number in Africa and the third largest worldwide. CARE Uganda is one of the leading responders, but more funding is required for the humanitarian response overall.

• Read more in this NGO joint statement: exercise confirms Uganda hosts Africa's largest refugee population, but funding fails to match

Venezuela refugee crisis

CARE is continuing to distribute cash vouchers, rehabilitate shelters, and provide protection services and mental health and psychosocial support to displaced Venezuelans in Ecuador.

• Read more about how CARE is helping in this article on The Independent website, Venezuela’s Refugee Crisis: why don’t we care?