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.
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).
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