According to the 2024 Global Peace Index (GPI), Yemen is the world’s least peaceful country within the world’s least peaceful region (The Middle East and North Africa)—ranking last among the 163 countries assessed, which represent 99.7 percent of the world’s population. After enduring nearly a decade of war, this marks the first time Yemen has been ranked at the bottom of the index—with its fall being driven by violent demonstrations, political instability, and relations with neighboring countries.[1]
Over that decade, Zaki,[2] a father in his 40s, felt the first major impact of Yemen’s deepening insecurity in 2018 when the war’s shifting frontlines drove him from the small village where he lived and forced him to flee with his family to the city. In spite of the losses of displacement, however, Zaki tried to stay positive and clung to a wild hope that their flight might result in better educational opportunities for his children. Living in the village, Zaki had always dreamed of enrolling his children in private schools one day—which he believed would equip them for a brighter future. Thus, in the city they escaped to, he often sat up at night watching his children sleep and concocting ways he might make that dream a reality.
Then, as the months passed, the reality of their situation began to set in. Living among the 4.8 million Yemenis experiencing protracted displacement, Zaki worked hard. However, no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t even earn enough to feed his children—much less enroll them in a private school. Like some 70 percent of Yemen’s internally displaced households, they had to begin reducing the size of their meal portions. As their nutritional intake plummeted, so did the performance of Zaki’s children in the public schools where they were enrolled. They were often sick, and sometimes Zaki kept them home even when they weren’t sick. Although he longed for his kids to get a good education, he also worried when they went to school as they were often sent away since their teachers were absent more days than they were present. Eventually, they stopped going altogether.
According to the United Nations (UN)’s 2025 Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, some 1.6 million displaced students like Zaki’s children are among the most vulnerable of the more than 3.2 million Yemeni children of school age who do not attend school. Meanwhile, 65 percent of all Yemeni teachers do not receive salaries or incentives for their work, forcing many to leave the teaching profession in order to feed their own families.[3] Thus, as Zaki’s dream of a brighter future for his children faded, he could hardly blame the absent teachers—his own productivity was beginning to flag, too, as the family’s meals kept getting smaller.
Frustration and despair had nearly taken hold of Zaki’s heart when a rare lifeline reached his household in the form of a food basket delivered by a local non-profit. Although it was not monthly, the food basket came frequently enough that Zaki’s family began eating regular meal portions again. Zaki was also able to use some of the money he did earn to buy his family nutritious fruits and vegetables, which they’d had to forgo when he could only afford minimal amounts of staples like flour, rice, and beans.
As he watched his children’s energy return with better nourishment, Zaki began to feel more optimistic—still, he was not prepared when a community initiative offered his children scholarships to enroll in private schools with a strong curriculum and teachers who showed up every day. Overcome with emotion, Zaki wept tears of joy as one of his long-cherished dreams came true just when it seemed most out of reach. “Life can be very difficult, but I know that my children matter—like all children,” Zaki shared. “When others do what they can to help create a brighterfuture for children like mine, it gives me hope that our children can be a part of building a more peaceful future for our nation.”
Now, in February of 2025, many Yemenis like Zaki and his family are still waiting for a lifeline of hope as Yemen has continued to grow less peaceful in the months since the release of the 2024 Global Peace Index—its 18th edition—in June. At the end of 2024, a flash report from the security, intelligence, and risk management firm Sari Global explained that:
From mid-November to late December 2024, Yemen’s conflict has transformed into a broader regional flashpoint with direct Israeli intervention, ongoing US-UK coalition attacks, and resilient Houthi retaliation both on land and at sea. Escalations in Sanaa, al-Hudaydah, and Taiz illustrate the multidimensional nature of this war, where global powers and local factions alike drive the hostilities. Absent meaningful diplomatic engagement or ceasefire agreements, the humanitarian and security challenges will likely intensify in the coming weeks, with significant ramifications for Yemeni civilians and regional stability.[4]
Moreover, the possibility of escalating armed violence cited by Sari entering the new year was joined by the escalating impact of life-threatening illnesses in Yemen, which reported the world’s highest burden of cholera[5] in 2024.[6] Yemen’s cholera epidemic initially broke out in 2016,[7] and its current resurgence is impacting all of Yemen’s 22 provinces—while health partners have been forced to close dozens of diarrhea treatment centers and hundreds of oral rehydration centers due to lack of funding. Alongside the cholera resurgence, malnutrition rates also significantly worsened in Yemen due to a lack of drinking water and nutritious food in 2024, with malnourished individuals being particularly vulnerable to cholera, which in turn exacerbates malnutrition. According to FHI 360, an estimated seven million people in Yemen are now at risk of acute malnutrition. Moreover, since October 2024, the organization has been sending teams into hard-to-reach rural communities in conflict areas—much like the village Zaki’s family fled in 2018. So far, their work has covered districts in two provinces, where they have found that 19 percent—or nearly one in five children under the age of five years is acutely malnourished. The organization is referring these cases for treatment while urging others to take action in Yemen. “Undernutrition has risen as conflict continues unabated, economic conditions deteriorate and flooding contaminates drinking water, contributing to a rise in disease,” FHI 360’s country representative in Yemen said in January 2025. “The children of Yemen are in urgent need of additional food aid.”
[8] So long as global powers and local factions continue to drive Yemen’s hostilities, families like Zaki’s will remain dependent on aid to stave off malnourishment. Meanwhile, Yemen’s instability will have a destabilizing impact on its neighbors and a globe that desires to ship its wealth along Yemen’s coasts. Alternatively, nurturing hope and building a more peaceful future for Yemen’s next generation will require long-term commitments from all who believe that Yemen’s children matter—and that hope for the world lies in the expression of care and concern for its most vulnerable.
[1] Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2024: Available at: https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GPI-2024-web.pdf
[2] Name changed to protect the identity of a vulnerable Yemeni family.
[3] https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-humanitarian-needs-and-response-plan-2025-january-2025
[4] https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/flash-report-recent-escalation-yemen-december-28-2024
[5] Cholera is a bacterial infection of the intestines which releases a toxin leading to severe diarrhea, which is usually self-limiting. However, one in 20 patients may develop a life-threatening illness characterized by uncontrollable watery diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps. Without appropriate treatment, severe cases can lead to extreme dehydration and death within hours.
[6] In 2024, over 250,000 suspected cholera cases and 861 associated deaths had been recorded in Yemen, accounting for 35 percent of worldwide cholera cases and 18 percent of related deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
[7] From 2016 to 2022 some 2.5 million suspected cases of cholera were reported in Yemen, and around 4,000 people—mostly children—lost their lives.
[8] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1158491, OCHA, The Media Line, UNICEF, The International Organization for Migration, USAID, FHI 360
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