UN, international aid agencies warn US against plan to blacklist Yemen’s Ansarullah
The United Nations and international aid agencies have warned the United States against its plan to label Yemen’s popular Ansarullah Movement as a foreign terrorist organization, raising concerns that such a move would prevent life-saving aid reaching the war-wracked country and would derail a related $700 million aid program.
David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), told the Washington Post daily newspaper earlier this week that the designation could hamper aid deliveries.
Beasley’s warning came after he had a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, where he expressed “grave concerns” about the blacklisting of Ansarullah.
“WFP is deeply concerned about the potential impact of a decision by the US to designate Ansarullah as a foreign terrorist organization,” an unnamed WFP spokesperson said.
“It would heighten the gravity of an already severe humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” the spokesperson added.
The WFP chief later met with US Republican Senator Todd Young, who along with fellow Senators Chris Coons and Chris Murphy advised Pompeo not to take the measure against the popular Yemeni movement.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) also expressed alarm at the potential move.
“Like all humanitarian organizations operating on the ground, UNICEF would be deeply concerned about any decisions that could compromise the safety of our teams and their efforts to assist vulnerable children and families,” a spokesman for the UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide said.
Moreover, Scott Paul, the humanitarian policy lead at Oxfam America, warned that Ansarullah’s terrorist designation would create a situation in which all aid work in Yemen would be criminalized, and no licenses or authorizations for aid work would be available.
Paul underscored that the US government's failure to issue licenses for humanitarian assistance to Somalia in 2011 led up to a famine that took the lives of a quarter-million people in the Horn of Africa nation.
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