HADRAMAUT/HAJJAH/TAI’Z GOVERNORATES, Yemen – “The patient was in her third trimester and arrived with severe bleeding,” said Ms. Akaber, a community midwife from the Ku'aydinah District, in Yemen’s northwestern Hajjah Governorate. “I provided assistance, but the baby was already dead.”
The patient was Hanan Wahan, a 25-year-old mother of three who was nine months pregnant. She experienced complications during an attempted home birth, and Ms. Akaber urged her husband to bring her to the district hospital, hoping they could save her life.
“I couldn’t stop the bleeding – she needed the attention of an obstetric gynaecologist,” she told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.
From February 2024, UNFPA had supported the hospital by providing maternal health medicines, medical supplies and deploying health workers such as midwives and other specialists. But when Ms. Wahan arrived almost unconscious, the obstetrician was no longer working there: Due to the steep funding cuts, UNFPA had to suspend its support at the end of March 2025.
Neither Ms. Wahan nor her baby survived. “Without a gynaecologist, I was unable to save her life,” said midwife Akaber.
Support structures crumble
More than a decade of crisis and conflict in Yemen has left 19.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Nearly half the population is acutely hungry and only 40 per cent of health facilities are operational.
Around 2.7 million women and girls don’t have access to reproductive healthcare, and six out of ten births take place without a skilled attendant. Now, many facilities that provided reproductive healthcare, mental health services and family planning have been forced to shut down, often with tragic consequences.
“Without a gynaecologist, I was unable to save her life”
Halima*, 45, is a midwife from the central Hadhramaut Governorate. “I’m the breadwinner of the family and support my husband and five children” she told UNFPA, which previously supported her employment at the Tarim General Hospital.
“With the suspension of the support, everything changed,” she said. Her monthly pay – just $42 – is unreliable. “My monthly salary provided by the hospital is irregular and far from enough to secure the basics. I had to borrow money just to feed my children.
“Sometimes I can’t buy medicine for my husband’s chronic condition, and I fear for his health. The stress and exhaustion I carry from home inevitably shows in my work, and I can no longer give my patients the full attention I used to.”
From providing services to seeking them
Heba, 30, is from Al-Ma’afir, in the city of Taiz in southwestern Yemen. “I used to work as a legal specialist at a safe space for women and girls who faced violence and discrimination,” she told UNFPA, which supported the safe space.
“For me, it was more than a workplace – it was a platform where I could serve my community and at the same time build a stable future for my family.”
In rural and marginalized areas like Al-Ma’afir, these spaces are lifelines not only for women seeking refuge, but also for the staff whose livelihoods and dignity depend on them.
“I’m the main provider for my younger sister and my divorced mother, who suffers from a chronic illness. I felt proud that I was contributing both to my family’s stability and to the protection of women in my community.”
That safe space is now closed due to lack of funds.
For Heba, the closure has affected every part of her life. “The impact was beyond financial – I lost confidence in myself and withdrew from people around me. The professional plans I had carefully built disappeared overnight. Instead of being a provider of protection, I became someone in need of support.”
Harsh and lived realities of funding cuts
UNFPA’s programmes in Yemen cover the reproductive health and protection needs of women and girls who are among the most vulnerable; but with funding slashed by 60 per cent in 2025, its appeal for $70 million is so far just one third funded.
By the end of March 2025, UNFPA was forced to drastically reduce its reproductive health and gender-based violence protection programmes, leaving almost 1.5 million women without access to critical health services and 300,000 without prevention of, and treatment for, gender-based violence.
More than 1,000 health workers and 400 people working at women and girls’ safe spaces have lost their jobs or financial compensation. Funding cuts to UNFPA have led to the closure of 44 health facilities, 10 safe spaces, one mental health centre, and 14 mobile reproductive health and protection teams.
The agency will also no longer be able to provide training for some 800 midwives – more than half of the midwives UNFPA had planned to support in 2025. As a result, it is projected nearly 600,000 women will be deprived of the services of a trained midwife when they need it.
The safe space was never just walls and doors
Fatima*, a mother in her early 30s, lost her job as a psychologist at a safe space in Seiyun, in the Hadhramaut Governorate, following the funding cuts.
“My work was not only about listening or giving advice. It was about helping women find strength, giving girls and adolescents a rare chance to be heard in a society that often silences them, and reminding them that their voices matter,” she told UNFPA.
“It was a place of healing and hope”
Six months since the United States Government terminated most funding to UNFPA, nearly 17 million people around the world – most of them women and girls – risk losing access to health and protection services.
“The safe space was never just walls and doors,” explained Fatima. “It was a place of healing and hope. Its closure was not simply the end of a project – it silenced the voices and dreams of hundreds of women and girls in Seiyun.”
*Names changed for privacy and protection
