[ad_1]
The 24-member cabinet, announced last week, was sworn in at a ceremony in Riyadh where Yemen’s President Hadi resides.
Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is sworn in in a new government that was formed thanks to a power-sharing agreement negotiated by Saudi Arabia last year.
The 24-member cabinet, announced last week, was sworn in at a ceremony on Saturday in the Saudi capital Riyadh, where Hadi lives.
The new government, headed by Prime Minister Maeen Abdul Malik, represents the northern and southern regions of Yemen with an equal number of members from each region.
It includes five members of the South Separatist Transition Council (STC) as part of an attempt to end a power struggle between Hadi’s loyalists and the secessionists.
The government formation was part of the Saudi-backed Riyadh Accord, signed between the Yemeni government and the STC in November 2019 to seek to end military clashes between forces on both sides.
President Hadi called on the new government to act as a team and tackle the economic problems of the impoverished country.
“You come from different blocs and geographic areas, but let the country and its citizens first and foremost be your main concern,” Hadi told members of the government.
“We are in a new stage and depend on you to act as a team,” he added, according to the official Yemen Saba news agency.
Yemen has been mired in conflict since a Saudi-led coalition intervened there in March 2015 to restore the government removed from power in the capital Sana’a by the Houthi rebel movement in late 2014.
The STC, formed in 2017, is backed by the United Arab Emirates, while Hadi’s government is backed by Saudi Arabia. Both are part of a Saudi-led coalition.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the conflict in Yemen has so far claimed 233,000 lives.
The conflict has also pushed the impoverished Arab country to the brink of famine and devastated its health facilities.
Earlier this month, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) declared Yemen the country most at risk of humanitarian disaster in 2021, marking the third year in a row that the war-ravaged nation has achieved the grim recognition.
According to the UN, 80% of Yemen’s 30 million people need some form of assistance or protection. About 13.5 million Yemenis currently face acute food insecurity, including 16,500 people living in conditions close to starvation, according to UN data.
[ad_2]
