Driving children against poverty

In this country devastated for more than 10 years of war, there are very young people, even 13 years old, who conduct taxis or public transport. They hope to win even small amounts of money to keep impoverished families. UN: The crisis triggered by the conflict “has affected and devastating women and girls.”

Sana’a (Asianews) – In Yemen, ravaged by war and poverty, there are children up to 13 years driving commercial vehicles, starting with taxis, to keep their families that do not have other means of subsistence due to the civil war – which still continues – the critical economic situation. Difficulties fed by the lack of heads of family or men capable of working, because they died in combat or were victims of violence; Hence the need for children between 13 and 15 years of getting behind the wheel of vehicles to earn some money that allows them to get out of extreme poverty.

Khalil Sasaga, 13, said he learned to drive from his father and now works to keep his family after emigrating to Marib from another city. “I work to keep my family,” Sasaga told the Turkish agency Anadolu. «Normally my father drives a minibus and I do the same to help him and earn money. So far I have not had problems driving. The crowded roads and dense traffic do not bother me ».

Mursi Muhammed Salih Zevid, also 13 years old, works on passenger transport and said he had to learn to drive out of necessity. «I share my income with them. Although the roads are congested, I have no problems, “he said, because” I only try to make a living. “

Muhammed Ammar Mebhut Cehlen, 15, says that his father is disabled. “Since I started driving, the income and quality of life of my family have improved,” he says.

In recent days, the United Nations has also expressed concern about the fate of the population in Yemen, especially women and children. «The crisis has had a disproportionate and devastating impact on women and girls. They have suffered systematic discrimination and exclusion for decades, ”said Tom Fletcher, deputy general secretary of Humanitarian Affairs and Coordinator of the Emergency Socorum, before the UN Security Council. “It is a bleak panorama,” he continued, and added that about 9.6 million women and girls need “urgently” humanitarian aid to save their lives, since they face “hunger, violence and a health system in collapse.” “There are no signs of progress for them,” concluded the UN expert.

At the same time, Yemen’s maternal mortality rate is “the highest” of the Middle East and 1.3 million pregnant women and recent mothers suffer malnutrition. More than six million women and girls face “high risks” of abuse and exploitation and 1.5 million girls in Yemen do not have access to schooling. Therefore, the UN also wants to reinforce help programs in the education sector, trying to lift “a community that is already on the edge of the abyss” and in which it is “women and children who take the worst part.”

The Yemen conflict broke out in 2014 as an internal confrontation and climbed open war with the intervention in March 2015 by Riyadh at the head of a coalition of Arab nations opposed to the Houthi rebel militias, supported by Iran. According to the United Nations, the war has charged more than 400,000 lives and has triggered the “Worse humanitarian crisis in the world”on which COVID-19 has since had effects “Devastators”; Millions of people on the edge of starvation and children -10,000 dead In the conflict- they will suffer the consequences For decades. There are more than three million internal displaced people, most of which live in conditions of extreme misery, hunger and epidemics of different kinds, among which cholera stands out.