UN Urges Saudi Arabia to Allow Journalists in Yemen
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The United Nations on Wednesday demanded media access to report on the "man-made catastrophe" in Yemen after a Saudi Arabia-led coalition blocked three foreign journalists from traveling on a UN aid flight to the Arab country’s capital Sana’a.
"Steps like this do not help," UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York, according to Reuters.
"This has been a large man-made humanitarian problem, the world needs to know and journalists need to have access."
Haq said the UN humanitarian air service had been allowed to take off on Wednesday and had landed in Sana’a carrying 26 humanitarian aid workers, but not the three journalists from the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, is not getting enough attention in international media," he said.
"The lack of coverage is hindering humanitarian workers efforts to draw the attention of the international community and donors to the man-made catastrophe that the country is experiencing," he said.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for more than two years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
Over 12,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.
