Handling an epidemic during humanitarian crisis in a civil war - The case Yemen

Yemen is amid in three threats at the moment, during a civil war with a pandemic hitting them during a humanitarian crisis. The aim of this work was to understand how has the civil war in Yemen shaped and impacted their humanitarian crisis and COVID-19 response. A literature review was used in this study which helped to analyze the work. As a theoretical framework, it was used Michael E. Brown’s concept of Causes and dimensions of internal actors and Mary Kaldor’s concept of New Wars, which helped to outline and analyze the elements of this conflict and what effects internal and external Actors have in the conflict. Mason and Rychard´s conflict mapping tools were used as a method. Also, the inter-agency framework helped to analyze the structural causes and key actors in the conflict. These all helped answer the research question, how has the civil war in Yemen affected their humanitarian crisis and COVID-19 response? One of the important points that this conflict in Yemen tells us is the importance of local humanitarian workers when the conflict actors deny access to the areas. Without them, the work of international aid workers would be almost impossible, as the war continued around. The two humanitarian actors benefit from each other and this brings joint benefit to the Yemeni civilians. The main findings are as the war prolongs for a long time and externals actors intervene in it, followed by a humanitarian crisis affecting innocent civilians. Such a country will then be vulnerable to various pandemics. This has happened in the conflict in Yemen, as the situation is terrible and the COVID-19 pandemic disaster is coming to light there. One can state as a conclusion of the study that further research on the effect of COVID-19 could be helpful for the future to understand the real catastrophic effects this absurd conflict has brought