According to Reuters, the United Nations World Food Programme is hoping for a share of hundreds of millions of dollars from a private foundation. UN food chief David Beasley said the foundation was set up by US private equity investor Tim Collins.
More than six years of war in Yemen – widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran – have sent the impoverished country spiralling into what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
In a document shared with aid groups and seen by Reuters, the 2021 Famine Prevention Foundation aims to “avert a widespread famine by getting immediate assistance to the maximum number of people” experiencing famine or on the brink of famine.
Beasley said that he has spoken with Collins several times about the foundation, which has yet to be publicly announced.
“Tim’s working hard on a private foundation of funds,” Beasley told reporters. “He expressed his concerns about the governments around the world being stretched because of the crisis that we’re now facing because of Covid.”
