The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Monday that the European Union has donated €12 million to help tackle the growing hunger crisis in Yemen.

“With 14 million people food insecure in strife-torn Yemen, the European Union (EU) has committed 12 million euros in support of FAO’s efforts to tackle rising hunger,” the UN organisation said in a statement published on its website. “EU funds will be used to provide a better understanding of the magnitude of the current situation and avert a deepening crisis, while providing immediate agricultural support to more than 150,000 people to help them rapidly improve food production and nutrition.”

The statement stressed that despite efforts in Yemen, there is a need to do more in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. According to the FAO, it needs $48.4 million to make key emergency agricultural livelihood interventions that will assist more than 3 million of the most vulnerable food and nutrition insecure people in Yemen.

Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid Bin Daghr, meanwhile, has called on international human rights and relief organisations to open offices in the country’s provisional capital of Aden. MEM