An appeal has been made by the United Nations have appealed for nearly $450m (€345m) in humanitarian aid for conflict-torn Yemen to save it from becoming what one UN official called "another Somalia".
Yemen will need substantial humanitarian assistance over the next three to five years, especially for food, health care, sanitation and clean water, UN agencies and other relief groups working in Yemen said at a conference in Dubai.
Almost a year of protests against outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh has brought Yemen's economy close to collapse, worsening already dire living conditions for many people who face acute shortages of fuel, food, water and electricity.
Aside from its political and economic crisis, Yemen must also cope with a growing influx of refugees from the Horn of Africa to its southern coast and a host of Yemenis forced to flee their homes by fighting in the south and the north.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that at the end of November around 214,000 refugees and almost half a million internally displaced persons were in Yemen.
Arrivals from Somalia had increased, with 3,292 reaching Yemen in September and 3,689 in October, compared to a monthly average of 1,648 in the first half of the year, UNHCR said.
This year's turmoil in Yemen had posed many challenges, the country's health and population minister, Ahmed al-Ansi, said.
Saleh last month signed a pact brokered by Yemen's wealthy Gulf Arab neighbours to hand power to his deputy Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Under the deal, Saleh's General People's Congress and opposition parties agreed to divide cabinet posts between them, forming a unity government to lead Yemen to a presidential election in February.
