The concerns of the educational authorities in many Yemeni governorates escalated after the World Food Program announced a reduction in the amount of food aid to government schools.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said that it excluded 50% of the children covered by school feeding during the month of November; Due to the severe lack of funding.

A large percentage of Yemeni families depend on food aid provided by the United Nations program for their children in schools. In order to keep her children in school without them dropping out of education.

Reducing the amount of food aid would deprive thousands of students of daily meals that children from poor families relied on to ease the living conditions of millions of families affected by the economic repercussions the country is experiencing.

Excluding one million children

The United Nations Program said in its latest report on the “humanitarian situation in Yemen”: “Due to the lack of funding, we were only able to target approximately one million children out of the two million children that were scheduled to be reached nationwide at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.

The report added that the program’s operations in Yemen are still suffering from a severe funding shortage, as the funding gap amounts to 68% of the total net funding requirements, amounting to $620 million for the next six months (December 2024 - May). 2025).

He pointed out that despite the lack of funding, the program was able last month to provide assistance to about 748,000 school children in more than 1,500 schools within the school feeding program.

Expansion of the healthy kitchen project

In exchange for reducing food aid; Due to a lack of donor funding, the World Food Program revealed that, within the framework of the Healthy Kitchen Project, it provided fresh meals to 31.8 thousand children in 32 schools in Aden and Sanaa during the same period.

He is also currently working on expanding the scope of the school feeding project to include other governorates, namely: Al-Hudaydah, Taiz, and Hadramaut, and this was confirmed by the leadership of the Education Office in Aden Governorate.

There is no reduction in Aden

The Director of the Education Office in Aden, Dr. Nawal Jawad, said that the reduction in aid and meals for children by the World Food Program did not include the governorate’s schools, and the reduction may be targeting other Yemeni governorates.

Jawad added to Al-Ain News that the office had not received any reports regarding the reduction of food aid rations in the governorate’s schools, according to statements from officials of the specialized departments in the Ministry of Education and the Aden office, who have continuous communication with the World Food Program.

The Director of the Education Office revealed that she had contacted the Director General of School Nutrition at the Yemeni Ministry of Education, Dr. Fadl Qahtan, and the Director of the School Kitchen Project in Aden Governorate, located in the Dar Saad District, Sabah Bin Brik, and they reported that there was no reduction in aid.

She continued: On the contrary, at the end of the first semester this year, a new school was added to the food aid rations in Aden, which is the Khawla Bint Al-Azwar School in Dar Saad. The number of schools targeted by the school kitchen project has reached 17 schools so far, according to confirmations from the relevant departments