“My daughter is dying. Save her,” Tahani’s father pleaded, after years of knocking on the doors of officials and aid organisations in the hope they would be able to save his eight-year-old daughter.
More than 2.2 million children under five in Yemen are acutely malnourished, over half a million of them severely, the United Nations says.
The war, which began about 12 years ago, has left more than 22 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 18.3 million facing acute food shortages. Yet the country has received only a fifth of the $2.2bn it needs to help them this year.
Tahani’s case led Al Jazeera Arabic to investigate the stories of other children enduring the same suffering, and to ask: where do the billions in aid sent to Yemen go, and why does it not prevent children from reaching dire levels of hunger and malnutrition?
Al Jazeera visualises where malnutrition is severe in Yemen, how aid funding is distributed, and why experts say aid is treating the symptoms rather than the causes.
Severe malnutrition rising among children
The search for answers took Al Jazeera to displacement camps, nutrition centres and hospitals.
The family of Jiyad Mohammed Jalal, who has not turned two yet, resides in the al-Khadeesh camp in Abs district of Hajjah governorate. The war forced them out of Haradh district. Jiyad is severely malnourished. His weight has fallen to dangerous levels and he needs continuous treatment, so the hospital has become part of the family’s routine.
Children like Jiyad reach nutrition centres only after displacement and poverty have taken their toll. He is not an isolated case. According to ground reports obtained by Al Jazeera, more than 200 malnutrition cases have been documented in Abs over the past three years. In Dhale governorate, Al-Nasr Hospital received 269 acutely malnourished children between January and August 2026.
Almost a quarter of Yemen’s acutely malnourished children, 516,157, have the severe form of the condition.
Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population stated that between January and July 2026 there was an increase in cases of “severe” malnutrition among children under five compared with the same period in 2025.
According to the Health Ministry and data analysed by Al Jazeera Arabic, Taiz had 11,982 cases of severe malnutrition in children, followed by Aden (7,339) and Dhale (6,710).
These local figures do not, on their own, provide a national measure of the prevalence of malnutrition, but they reveal something else that is more important in fieldwork: that cases do not appear in a single centre, and that pressure on nutrition services is distributed across different parts of the country.
Taiz had 24,529 cases of moderate malnutrition, followed by Abyan (15,366) and Lahj (11,893).
Treating the symptoms, but returning to the same conditions
At clinics, treatment depends on severity. Children with severe malnutrition need a full medical assessment and those with complications may need to be admitted to hospital.
Stable cases can be treated and followed up as outpatients under the approved medical protocol.
Moderate cases are monitored at the clinic, where they receive therapeutic foods or nutritional supplements and have their weight and growth checked regularly.
In al-Sumayya camp in Marib, Dr Muajiba al-Mansouri runs a government nutrition clinic. Over the past year, she told Al Jazeera, it treated 33 children with severe acute malnutrition, 85 with moderate acute malnutrition and 84 mothers.
Lack of food or poor diet, illness, social conditions and feeding problems are all made worse by war, poverty and displacement, she said. The World Food Programme (WFP) supports treatment of moderate cases, while supplies for severe cases come through UNICEF and the governorate health office.
When al-Mansouri spoke to Al Jazeera, her clinic had recorded no deaths from malnutrition, thanks to timely treatment. In her clinic, four severely malnourished children regained their appetite and weight after their mothers learned therapeutic feeding. But a child saved in the clinic often returns to the same conditions that caused the problem.
Mothers are also facing the same risks. Some 1.3 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are estimated to suffer from malnutrition.
A mother feeding a child also needs food and care herself, but she lives in the same economic and health conditions as her family.
Expanding need and shrinking response
According to UN agencies, some 14.4 million people need water, sanitation and hygiene services, and only about 59.3 percent of health facilities are fully operational.
Funding has never matched declared need. According to Humanitarian Response Plan data, in 2022, $2.27bn of the required $4.27bn was funded. In 2024, the figure was about $1.51bn of the $2.71bn required. The 2026 plan seeks about $2.16bn but is only 20.6 percent funded. These figures cover all sectors, not just malnutrition.
The lack of full funding comes as Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, recorded a sharp rise in cases at the facilities it supports during the first half of 2026.
UNICEF said the shortfall in funding has forced programmes to prioritise life-saving treatment over prevention and has limited access to children in the areas most in need.
The Health Ministry said severe cases among children below five rose during January-July 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. The ministry said falling WFP funding roughly halved the programme’s reach, from 122 districts to 62, so a drop in some registered cases does not mean the situation is improving. It added that government support through the budget, therapeutic food and health workers is lacking.
Billions for the response yet malnutrition persists
As the investigation expanded, Al Jazeera contacted organisations about Tahani’s case. When they called her father back, they learned she had died. According to him, she died of hunger.
While Tahani was struggling, millions were being allocated to humanitarian projects. According to documents obtained by the investigation, a Norwegian Refugee Council project in Hajjah had a budget of about $1.1m and allocated roughly $353,000 to activities tied to its objectives. One beneficiary said he received cash assistance only once. A WFP project with Relief International, worth about $4.86m, included more than $2m for salaries and allowances and about $1.84m for storage.
Mousa Alaya, a specialist in humanitarian aid and war economies, argues that the question is not only how much money entered Yemen but what it changed. Aid, he says, operates within a network of interests and actors. It can save lives, but it cannot restore salaries, jobs or public services, or end the war economy.