The civil war gripping Yemen for the last three years has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters as millions of people face starvation. In an effort to understand the scope of the crisis, The Associated Press launched a one-year project with the Pulitzer Center, a non-profit news organization that helps cover underreported stories internationally. AP Cairo-based reporter Maggie Michael, one of the few journalists who has followed the unfolding tragedy in Yemen from the beginning, often at great risk, used the Pulitzer grant for an extended reporting trip across Yemen with Cairo photographer Nariman el-Mofty and Yemen-based videographer Maad al-Zekri.
In all, they drove more than 400 miles through five governorates, including one harrowing drive near an active front line outside of Khoukha, from their base in Aden. They interviewed mothers and families affected, plus food experts, doctors and volunteers, and they found that more than 8.4 million of the nation’s 29 million people rely almost completely on food aid.
The team’s courageous efforts to tell this story win the Beat of the Week.
Awsaf, a 5-year-old Yemeni girl, eats bread and drinks tea – which on many days is the only food she has – crouching next to her mother at their hut in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 15, 2018. Across southern Yemen stretches a landscape of desperation. In towns, villages and camps for the displaced, families are left unable to afford food amid the civil war between Houthi rebels and a government backed by a destructive Saudi-led air campaign.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Awsaf, a thin 5-year-old who is getting no more than 800 calories a day from bread and tea, half the normal amount for a girl her age, rests near her hut in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 15, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Awsaf, a thin 5-year-old who is getting no more than 800 calories a day from bread and tea, half the normal amount for a girl her age, walks near her hut in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 15, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Hagar Yahia makes bread as her husbands rests at their hut, in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 9, 2018. Yahia, a mother of eight, breaks down in tears talking about her family's deprivation. Late last year, as fighting closed in, they fled more than 200 miles, eventually ending up in the village of Red Star on the Arabian Sea coast in the south. Ever since, they've struggled to find enough food.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Hagar Yahia, a Yemeni woman, shows the amount of flour she uses to make a loaf of bread, in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 15, 2018. On the few good days when she or her husband find work they may have some vegetables. But most often they eat a heavy bread called “tawa” that fills the stomach longer, Yahia said.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Hagar Yahia pours tea for her 5-year-old daughter Awsaf in their hut in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 15, 2018 photo. Many families across southern Yemen say they live largely on bread and sweetened tea, sometimes just once a day.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Hagar Yahia weeps in her hut, in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 9, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Hagar Yahia's belongings inside her hut in Abyan, Yemen, Feb. 9, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Umm Mizrah, a 25-year-old Yemeni woman, holds her son Mizrah on a scale in Al-Sadaqa Hospital in the southern Yemen city of Aden, Feb. 13, 2018. The woman, who is nearly into the second trimester of pregnancy, weighed 38 kilograms (84 pounds), severely underweight. Mizrah, who was 17 months old, weighed 5.8 kilograms (12.8 pounds), around half the normal weight for his age.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Umm Mizrah, a 25-year-old Yemeni mother, reveals her collarbones and emaciated ribs at Al-Sadaqa Hospital in Aden, Yemen, Feb. 13, 2018. The woman, who is nearly into the second trimester of pregnancy, weighs 38 kilograms (84 pounds) and is severely undernourished. She has been eating one meal a day trying to feed her youngest son, who is badly malnourished.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A staff member measures the upper arm of Salima Ahmed Koryat, a 6-month-old Yemeni girl, to test how malnourished she is, at the main hospital in Mocha, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2018. The girl, whose family fled fighting in the nearby Mowza region, weighed only 4.2 kilograms (9 pounds).
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Six-month-old malnourished Salima Ahmed is checked by a nurse at the Mocha Hospital in Yemen, Feb. 10, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Photographs of severely malnourished infants hang on the wall in the administrative office at the Aden Hospital in Yemen, Feb. 13, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Aisha Mohammed holds her son, 7 month-old Ahmed Rashid Mokbel, who is severely malnourished, weighing only 3.3 kilograms (7 pounds), at Al-Sadaqa Hospital in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, Feb. 13, 2018. Mohammed herself weighs only 39 kilograms (86 pounds) and has two other malnourished children. After fleeing to Aden from their home near Yemen’s Red Sea coast to escape fighting, she and her husband can barely afford food for the family.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Sawda Mohammed Khalil waits for treatment at the al-Khoukha Hospital in Yemen, Feb. 12, 2018. Doctors estimate 40 percent of the children in the town suffer from malnutrition. Barefoot children fill the center's corridors, many visibly emaciated, some with malaria or cholera. Some can barely stand.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Sawda Mohammed Khalil holds her malnourished daughter as they wait for treatment at the al-Khoukha Hospital in Yemen, Feb. 12, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A doctor shows on her mobile phone, Feb. 10, 2018, a photo of Fadl, an 8-month-old Yemeni boy taken in his last days before he starved to death at a hospital in Mocha, Yemen. Fadl’s mother gave birth to him under a tree as she fled fighting, and ever since she struggled to get him enough food. Eight months later, at the time of his death, the baby boy weighed 2.9 kilograms (6 pounds), a third of the normal weight for his age.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Said Mohammed, whose 8-month-old son Fadl starved to death, visits his son’s grave in the Great Valley outside the Yemeni town of Mocha, Feb. 10, 2018. Eight months old at the time of his death, the baby boy weighed 2.9 kilograms (6 pounds), a third of the normal weight for his age.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Rising each day at 5 a.m. and working past dark on the weeklong journey, the AP team also found a story hidden underneath the abayas that shroud Yemeni women: Mothers were skipping meals to feed their children, serving in some cases as the last defense against the hunger that has killed thousands. The package included moving photos by el-Mofty and videos from al-Zekri showing the shrunken rib cages of children barely clinging to life and other horrifying images from the famine.
“Abyan’s Hagar story was the one that touched us the most,” recalled Michael. The stoical, hard-working woman, who lives in a rude hut with her husband and hungry children, “broke into tears while telling us about her conditions. She served us bread and tea and opened her heart to us.”
Using el-Mofty’s photos and al-Zekri’s footage, digital storytelling producer Nat Castaneda created a video that brought viewers into the mother’s home. Meanwhile, Michael and Middle East enterprise editor Lee Keath collaborated on a piece that captured the scope of the team’s journey across the country.
The May 3 story of people living on one meal a day drew more than 1:30 minutes of reader engagement, a level considered very high, more than 3,000 hits on the AP app, 192 hits on Newswhip and hundreds of shares on Twitter.
For empathetic work and persistent dedication in chronicling the desperate state of Yemen, a crisis much of the world is ignoring, Michael, el-Mofty and al-Zekri share this week’s $500 Beat of the Week award.