This video shows the horrors that the citizens of Yemen faced during their recent civil war. Not only did the war leave families homeless, it left many of the country’s citizens in poverty. This video specifically focused on the starving children. Families were too poor to feed their children, and the hospitals often times did not have the medicine available to treat the malnourishment once it had gone too far. A simple case of lactose intolerance became nearly fatal for an 18-month-old. He was the size of a 6-month-old and could not walk or talk yet. Unfortunately, he was born about a month after the war started, so the milk he needed was not as available to the villagers as it had previously been. Because of this, the boy was starving and in need of imported lactose free options for milk.

In Chapter 7 we discuss poverty, and the different forms of poverty. The situation in Yemen, as perceived by all standards, is absolute deprivation. Absolute deprivation can be defined as “an objective measure of poverty, defined by the inability to meet minimal standards for food, shelter, clothing, or health care” (Ferris and Stein 201). It is clear that under these circumstances the residents of Yemen were enduring absolute deprivation. This is apparent in the lack of food available to feed the families, and in the lack of medicine available to treat the malnourished and sick children. At the end of the video a woman describing her own child says, “I never thought I’d see a child look like this in Yemen”.

Yemen has always been a desperately poor country. However, the lack of resources after the war was absolutely devastating for this society, as it is for most societies that survive after a war has been had on their land. The children in Yemen were effected the most, with a starvation that could have wiped out an entire generation. A mother, Sara, is too malnourished to breast feed her malnourished infant. Together, her and the baby survive on water because Sara is too poor to afford milk for her child. With frequent air strikes, it was too dangerous for people to leave their areas; nowhere to escape to, nowhere to run to for freedom. This kept many people in poverty, and still keeps people in poverty because they had no option but to stay during the war.

Poverty is something that Americans often look down upon because we think that the victims inflict it upon themselves. This scenario in Yemen, disproves our American beliefs. Not all situations of poverty are self-inflicted, and it is a vicious cycle to try and escape; sometimes there is no way out.

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