“I have lived in this country for 17 years and I have never experienced a summer as hot as the one we have just come across – and the added impact of high humidity makes it truly unbearable,” says Daoudi. “Now imagine you have the added burden of pregnancy. You do not have the freedom to go outside and sleep in the streets as the men do, and all you have is a piece of paper to fan yourself.”
Recent extreme heat in Yemen has been made much worse by the fact that acute fuel shortages and damaged infrastructure have residents of Aden with sometimes only two hours of electricity per day.
“What you see in the news tends to be about missiles, bullets, and frontlines reactivated," says Daoudi. “But here - it’s not that people don’t have air-conditioning. They also don’t have fans, and they don’t even have fridges… and there is often no chance of buying these things as prices are increasing by hundreds of dollars. We understand that there have been heatwaves in Europe, but that is nothing like what it is like here if you are pregnant, where the heat is not only unbearable, but there are also more mosquito-born diseases and the sewage is now leaking from the ground.”
“Recent escalations present a dire threat to civilians in Yemen, who have already endured more than a decade of conflict and humanitarian crisis,” says Oxfam Yemen’s country director Ferran Puig. “Two thirds of the population in Yemen needs humanitarian assistance, and thousands are facing famine. Further military escalations will only deepen hunger and displacement and disrupt the humanitarian assistance millions depend on to survive.
“The international community must support efforts towards a peaceful solution and use its influence to de-escalate tensions and urgently restore and sustain vital aid to the country. Recent aid cuts have devastated lives.”