Yemeni minister urges UN to prevent humanitarian catastrophe
Yemen’s Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmad Abdullah Dares has urged the United Nations to pressure the Saudi-led coalition into releasing ships with petroleum products vital for services.
Dares met with UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen William David Gressly, Lebanon's al-Mayadeen news network reported Tuesday.
The minister hoped that the UN would shoulder its responsibility and work to ensure that the oil products are available for the Yemeni people in order to “avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
He said the current situation had “become dangerous” and that the release of the fuel ships “has become an urgent necessity that requires an immediate intervention to prevent the suspension of the service sectors.”
The UN, he said, had a duty “to find a mechanism to ensure the cessation of acts of maritime piracy” by the coalition countries and “to prevent the detention of ships carrying oil products.”
The Yemeni minister also stated that the coalition had been “detaining 14 oil tankers, including a vessel loaded with Mazut and a ship carrying natural gas for varying periods of time, up to a maximum of 11 months.”
The amount of fine the Yemeni people incurred due to the continued seizure of the vessels “reached more than $ 33 million in 2021.”
At the beginning of this year, the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) said the economic losses caused by the seizure of the oil tankers “exceeded $ 10 billion.”
The YPC organized a protest in front of the UN office in the capital Sana’a in January to denounce the continued seizure of the ships.
The executive director of the YPC, Ammar al-Adraei, has said the seizure of the ships led to the suspension of “more than 50 percent of the operational capabilities of the service, industrial and commercial sectors.”
More than 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger. That is according to UN data.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war on Yemen has claimed more than 100,000 lives since March 2015.
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