2.2 million starving children, a fifth of the money: Yemen's hunger crisis is a choice the world keeps making

"My daughter is dying. Save her," Tahani's father pleaded, after years of knocking on the doors of officials and aid organisations. He knocked in vain. By the time Al Jazeera's investigators called him back, the eight-year-old was dead. According to her father, she died of hunger. Tahani is one face of a catastrophe measured in millions. More than 2.2 million children under five in Yemen are acutely malnourished, over half a million of them severely, the United Nations says. Twelve years of war have 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 $2.2 billion it needs this year. Al Jazeera's investigation travelled to displacement camps, nutrition centres and hospitals to ask where the billions in aid sent to Yemen go, and why they do not stop children reaching the edge of death. In the al-Khadeesh camp in Abs district, Hajjah governorate, not-yet-two-year-old Jiyad Mohammed Jalal is severely malnourished; war drove his family from Haradh district, and the hospital has become part of their routine. Ground reports documented more than 200 malnutrition cases in Abs over three years; Al-Nasr Hospital in Dhale received 269 acutely malnourished children between January and August 2026. Yemen's health ministry says severe malnutrition among under-fives rose in January-July 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. Taiz recorded 11,982 severe cases, Aden 7,339 and Dhale 6,710. In al-Sumayya camp in Marib, Dr Muajiba al-Mansouri's government clinic treated 33 severely and 85 moderately malnourished children in a year, plus 84 mothers. Some 1.3 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are estimated to suffer from malnutrition. A child saved in the clinic, she said, often returns to the same conditions that caused the problem. The money, meanwhile, keeps shrinking. The 2026 humanitarian plan seeks about $2.16 billion and is only 20.6 percent funded, down from $2.27 billion of $4.27 billion in 2022. Doctors Without Borders recorded a sharp rise in cases in the first half of 2026. UNICEF says the shortfall has forced programmes to prioritise life-saving treatment over prevention. Falling World Food Programme funding has roughly halved its reach, from 122 districts to 62. And what does arrive does not always reach the hungry. Documents obtained by the investigation show a Norwegian Refugee Council project in Hajjah with a budget of about $1.1 million allocating roughly $353,000 to activities tied to its objectives; one beneficiary said he received cash assistance only once. A World Food Programme project with Relief International worth about $4.86 million included more than $2 million for salaries and allowances and about $1.84 million for storage. As humanitarian-aid specialist Mousa Alaya puts it, the question is not only how much money entered Yemen but what it changed: aid can save lives, but it cannot restore salaries, jobs or public services, or end the war economy that starves children in the first place.