"Famine 'largest humanitarian crisis in history of UN': UN humanitarian chief says 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria face starvation and famine," says the headline in Al Jazeera, echoed in the BBC and other international media, but easily ignored without the high-intensity spotlight that occasionally targets disasters with greater geostrategic centrality. In the United States, while headlines rightly focus on the 24 million who would lose health care under the Republican Trumpcare plan, no one has yet calculated the toll from a proposed 50% cut in the U.S. budget for support of the UN.
No one would claim that the international humanitarian assistance program is without major flaws, and UN officials quickly note that it cannot solve the fundamental issues leading to disaster, in particular military conflicts that in turn rest on political and diplomatic failures. This is particularly notable in the four countries mentioned in this most recent appeal, most dramatically in Yemen where U.S.-backed Saudi intervention has not only directly imposed massive civilian casualties but also blocked humanitarian assistance.
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