"Ashwaq," a seven-year-old, dies of starvation after days of living on water.

Arabian Sea Newspaper - Special

**((Arabian Sea)) Newsroom:** In a tattered tent in one of the displacement camps in Abs district, west of Hajjah Governorate, Yemen, the child "Ashwaq Ali Hassan Muhab" breathed her last in a painful silence, after spending her last days drinking only water, without tasting food or finding medicine. Her death was not just a number added to the lists of the dead, but a final cry of a child defeated by hunger and neglected by the world. Ashwaq, seven years old, did not suffer from a complex disease, nor was she injured in a war, but she passed away quietly, simply because she could not find anything to eat. Her small body, which had become like a skeleton, could not bear the burden of hunger. She used to sleep on an empty stomach and wake up to a false hope of a piece of bread, until her soul went out, while her father was unable to do anything but cry. In a video recording, Ashwaq's father appeared recounting the tragedy with eyes filled with pain, saying: "We spent four days without food, we could not find anything to eat, even the kilo of flour that we twelve were sharing had run out." When her condition worsened, he carried her to the health center of the camp, but he was met with a harsh apology: "There are no medicines." He intended to take her to the rural hospital, but he did not have the fare. Hunger was faster than his desperate attempts. Ashwaq died in her father's lap and was buried in the camp's soil, without the world knowing that a child had died because she could not find a single bite. In the same camp, the situation of other families is not much different. Ahmed Hussein, a displaced person and father of five children, says: "My children have turned into skeletons. We have nothing, no flour, no oil, not even water. I am afraid every night that I will wake up and find one of them has died of hunger." He added: "My wife and I go to sleep hungry to keep what is left of the food for our children. There is nothing more painful than seeing your child cry because his stomach hurts from emptiness." What happened to Ashwaq, according to journalist Issa Al-Rajhi, is only the beginning of a series of silent deaths. The displacement camps in Abs district have become temporary cemeteries, where children, women, and the elderly live on false hope, in light of a deadly international silence and a shameful local disregard. Humanitarian organizations were the last hope for those families, but they withdrew one after the other under the pressure of lack of funding and complex policies. More than a hundred organizations, including UN agencies, have suspended their activities, leaving behind thousands of families struggling with famine alone. Today, there is no food in the camps, no clean water, and no medicine. Only the crying of children and the groaning of hunger, while the coming days threaten a real famine, which may claim many lives after Ashwaq, unless the world addresses the disaster. Ashwaq's father appeals to the remaining human conscience to act. The stories to come will not be just news, but repeated scenes of children dying in the most horrific ways: hunger, and in silence.