Saada, Yemen – More than 23 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

Almost 3.6 million have been displaced since March 2015, with the figure including 53,000 families displaced since January 2019.

The living conditions inside refugee camps are very harsh. There is a lack of food, clean drinking water and electricity and only a few basic toilets.

Most of the displaced people in the refugee camps in the north of the country come from Saada and nearby villages on the border with Saudi Arabia.

Saada, a stronghold of the Houthi rebels, has been bombed heavily since 2015 and considered a military target by the Saudi-led coalition.

In the countryside around Abs, one of the poorest and most remote areas of the country, 200km from Saada, there are hundreds of tents between mountains and deserts.

After the start of the conflict, most of the men living in these camps lost their jobs, their homes and the possibility of maintaining their families.

Adel Ali Saleh Batal and his wife Amina lived in Beni Hassan in the province of Hajjah, in the northeast of the country. 

Amina was pregnant when the neighbourhood was bombed by the coalition and shrapnel struck her. She remembers falling to the ground and feeling great pain.

After the birth of her child three years ago, she discovered that the baby had suffered permanent neurological damage.

“The doctors say that the child must be treated for life with a device that emits an electric shock. We must buy this device and take it to the tent. But we have no money,” said Adel.

Ali Nasser el-Kahsi worked as a driver in Saada.

He said his house was destroyed by the bombing and he fled with his wife – nine months pregnant – and six children.

Today, they live in the refugee camp in Abs, fighting every day to eat and have clean water.