VERONIQUE DE VIGUERIE, FRANCE
YEMEN: BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH
In Yemen, every ten minutes a child dies from a treatable disease. Experienced French photographer Veronique de Viguerie states that she had never seen so many violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as she did in Yemen, particularly in the northern part of the country.
© Veronique de Viguerie, France (Freelance Photographer)
There, the children sleep in the streets because their houses have been destroyed by bombers. Children become beggars because their families have no source of income left. They become orphans and cripples, suffer from malnutrition and fall victim to starvation. Or they flee, like more than two million fellow Yemenis, from the air raids, the fighting and the growing misery. For almost two years now, their teachers have not been paid and therefore millions of girls and boys cannot attend school any longer. And since most of the times there is not even gasoline for ambulances, people die before they can be transported to one of the few remaining hospitals.
Chances of fleeing from the country: zero. Neither by land nor by sea. In a hospital in Sa’dah, a city in north-western Yemen once labeled a UNESCO World Heritage site but by now mostly destroyed, Viguerie found an eleven-year-old boy with shrapnel fragments lodged in his head, which nobody on site was able to remove. She saw nine-year-olds with the most severe injuries. And sometimes a little human being on the street, abandoned by all, closer to death than to life.
Curriculum Vitae: Veronique de Viguerie (Freelance Photographer)
© Veronique de Viguerie