Toll Of War In Yemen.
ANDERSON: It is a quarter past 7:00 in Abu Dhabi in the UAE from our Middle East programming hub. You're watching CNN. This is "Connect the World" with me, Becky Anderson. If you are just joining us, you are very welcome. It's simply hard to imagine that estimated 130 children are dying every day from starvation and disease in Yemen. Who knows how many will take their last breaths during this very show. From easily preventable causes. An aid group say things could only get worse. If the Saudi led blockade of Yemen continues. Tonight the World marks International children's day, we remember the United Nations declaration that all children have inherent right to life, to education and play and the right to health services. In Yemen, the reality is tragically different. We have an exclusive report now from Iona Craig and we warn you that the images you will see are very disturbing.</s>IONA CRAIG, INTERNATIONAL FREELANCE JOURNALIST: It's very easy obviously to impact of the war when you are traveling through areas that have been conflicted affected, where there's a lot of destruction, whether it has been air strikes, but it's the impact on the wider civilian population that you often don't really get to see. This 9-year-old boy in the hospital and as you see from the footage, he is suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Obviously it was very shocking to see a young boy in a state like that. He is skeletally thin. And he was lifeless just lying there while the doctors were trying to administer glucose to him. His female family members were with him and they've been unable to bring him into the hospital any sooner, because of the cost of getting help to the hospital. There are many children like him. The hospital is actually overflowing quite literally with patients. The hospital normally before the war was taking in 700 patient or treating 700 patients a day and now they're treating around 2,500 patients a day. You can see that so clearly in the hospital. It has like a bus station. You walked in there and it's, elbow to elbow. People just barring through the corridors trying to get access to medical care.</s>CRAIG: In that particular hospital that staff haven't been paid for more than a year. The government salaries haven't been paid. So effectively they're working as volunteers. When I was walking around the hospital with the Director, people in the corridors, staff was stopping him, begging for money essentially. And he wasn't able to give them anything. The hospital is struggling just over -- just to operate. And the Director of the hospital said to me, you know, if this continues on this sort of level, for the next six months, they don't know if they'll be able to stay open for six months' time, if the hospital will even still open.</s>ANDERSON: George Khoury is the head of office, OCHA in Yemen, he joins me now by skype. Let's drill down this. How complicit are countries who are part of all support, the ongoing Saudi led coalition campaign on Yemen in this?</s>GEORGE KHOURY, HEAD, OCHA IN YEMEN: Well, thank you. The blockade was imposed on Yemen without any kind of notification to the United Nations or to the agencies here. So the country's leading the coalition, you know, have direct responsibility, have direct responsibility on what's going on right now in Yemen. Like you mentioned in your report, every day, 130 children die every day in Yemen. Or if you put it otherwise, every ten minutes a child dies in Yemen of preventable disease and of starvation. That was the situation before the blockade was imposed on Yemen. The situation since then, since the blockade, has deteriorated sharply and as you can imagine women and children are among the most vulnerable groups here. At risk not only because of the conflict and the conduct of hostilities, but also because of the malnutrition like you mentioned in your report and because of disease. We have 400,000 children, by the way, who are severely malnourished like the child you featured in your report. These children, they depend for their survivals on therapeutic feeding and is supplies that we provide to these people. So we cannot afford any break in our supply pipelines, in our humanitarian supply pipelines. As we speak, because of the blockade we have 29 ship, 29 vessel with half million tons of humanitarian supplies that are waiting in seaports and cannot reach humans. We cannot reach the seaport. We cannot get our humanitarian supplies. The country is running out of fuel, running out of food, and you can imagine without fuel there is no electricity, there is no cleaning water. So the situation is literally deteriorating by the day, because of the blockade.</s>ANDERSON: The Saudis and those involved in the coalition say there is a reason for this blockade. They are trying to prevent the import of weapons and they refer to the ballistic missile fired at Riyadh just a week or so ago. What are they telling you specifically as a humanitarian organization about how they will help to ensure that you can get this aid on the move? What are they doing to help?</s>KHOURY: Well, right now there is a blockade. We cannot access the country humanitarian shipments, staff, aid workers cannot access the country. The United Nations last year has established a verification mechanism. It's called the United Nations verification and inspection mechanism. That is the mechanism that inspects vessels, before commercial vessels before they come to Yemen. This is the functioning mechanism. If there are any concerns, it has to be discussed within that context. The humanitarian aid does not carry any sort of supplies and cargo other than food, other than medicine that we bring to these people, so there is absolutely no reason for blocking the humanitarian cargo from coming to the country. As I mentioned earlier there are millions of people --</s>ANDERSON: Sorry. I'm just -- for our viewer's sake, and I hear your frustration, and I've listened to the frustration of so many humanitarian organizations of late. Can you explain why you think it is that this mechanism, this facility has broken down, that this humanitarian catastrophe is also failing to inspire a satisfactory response from the rest of the world?</s>KHOURY: That is the question for the media. Here in Yemen this is the largest humanitarian crisis globally. We have the largest food and security crisis globally. Every month seven million people depend on their daily survival on the food that we provide them. So the question is why is it not getting that? That is a question mostly for media, for countries. As humanitarian organizations, we are doing our level best on a daily basis and extremely conflicts and extremely dangerous situations and sometimes to reach the people in need and to keep them. Of course, we're saying humanitarian organizations, we save lives. We are not the solution for the problem. There has to be a political solution for the problem.</s>ANDERSON: We do not need reminding of the consequences of this campaign. We see them in the reports. The world is aware. They see these terrible, terrible images, three rounds of U.N. sponsored peace talks have collapsed and the fighting and casualties as you say have just gotten worse. From your perspective, what do you want to see happen next?</s>KHOURY: The first of all, you know from where is stand right now, the first thing that we want to see is the immediate left of this blockade. We need humanitarian supplies and cargo to come into the country, because we're heading towards a major, major catastrophe if we will not get our supplies. Any -- we cannot afford any shortages and we cannot afford any break in our supply pipelines. That is the first thing that we want to see, of course. Second thing, we want the parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under the international humanitarian law. The coalition has an obligation under the IHN to allow access and to facilitate access of humanitarian agencies to the people in need. Third, both parties to the conflict, they have also to respect their obligations under the international humanitarian law. They have an obligation to protect the civilians and steer the civilians from the war. So we call on them to respect all these obligations.</s>ANDERSON: With that we leave it there. We thank you very much indeed for joining us. Millions of people in desperate need of aid in Yemen. To find out how you can help, use CNN.com/impact. We will be right back.