Doctors on the Front Lines of
the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis
Director Skye Fitzgerald’s Oscar-nominated documentary
“Hunger Ward” chronicles Yemeni health care workers as they wrestle with famine
and violence.
| MARCH 29, 2021, 3:57 PM
A 4-year-old Yemeni child with acute malnutrition, Meshaal Mohammad, sleeps
in his father's lap at a camp for the internally displaced in Yemen's northern
Hajjah province on March 2. ESSA AHMED/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
The United
Nations has referred to the war in Yemen, which
turned six years old last week, as “the largest humanitarian crisis in the
world,” and director Skye Fitzgerald has seen it firsthand—just as he has
previously chronicled suffering in the Syrian war and the plight of migrants
off the Libyan coast. His latest project capping a humanitarian trilogy
is Hunger Ward, which has garnered an Oscar nomination for
documentary short subject. The film follows doctors and nurses in war-torn
Yemen as they grapple with the devastation from hunger, violence, and
American-made bombs and munitions that have ripped through the country.
President
Joe Biden has announced that the United States will end support for Saudi-led
military operations in Yemen. But Fitzgerald told Foreign Policy that
the Yemeni people still want the world to know what’s happening—even as he said
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have prevented journalists from
getting the story. The World Food Program says more than 16 million Yemenis are
food insecure, and famine-like conditions have returned to pockets of the
country. The rate of child malnutrition is one of the highest in the
world.
“I think the
reason that so many doctors and nurses and families were willing for us to
document and bear witness to such hard moments was because they want people to
know what’s happening,” Fitzgerald said. “They want the rest of the world to
know that children are dying from famine in the country, by human-caused
famine, famine that’s bigger than locusts, droughts, or anything else.”
This
interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Foreign Policy: What made
you want to make this film?
Skye Fitzgerald: There’s so many answers to that. One of the things
that I have been concerned about for quite some time has been compassion
fatigue surrounding the global refugee crisis. I see the fact that 1 percent of
the world’s population is currently displaced as a fact that we need to act
upon as a global community. And that was really what spurred this trilogy of
films that Hunger Wars is a part of, knowing that nearly 80
million people aren’t living in their homes and are being displaced by conflict
and economic [causes] and also disease and famine.
It was an
issue that I felt called upon to bring to a Western audience.
And so when
I started to examine what was happening in Yemen and learned through due
diligence just how deeply complicit the U.S. government is in the human-caused
famine there, it was an issue that I felt called upon to bring to a Western
audience. Because generally speaking, U.S. citizens know so little about the
conflict in Yemen. Despite the fact that we’re so deeply integrated into the conflict
and have been for the last six years. So really, it was for me a sense that the
fourth estate can really intervene in this conflict in a significant way, and I
wanted to be a part of that.
The U.S. has
been a partner in the Saudi coalition from the outset. The U.S. got involved to
support an ally, Saudi Arabia, in an endeavor that they [the Saudis] thought
was going to be a quick ousting of Ansar Allah or the Houthi movement of the
north [of Yemen], and of course it’s been the opposite of that, and it’s only
strengthened that movement.
FP: The film
follows Dr. Aida al-Sadeeq and nurse Mekkia Mahdi. What keeps them going
despite the struggles they face?
SF: We wanted to make sure that we were reaching out
to health care workers in both the south and north of the country, because we
really wanted to demonstrate how the effects of the war on civilians, and
particularly on children, is playing out in very similar fashions in both the
Hadi [government]-held areas as well as the Houthi-held areas.
So I sought
out Mekkia and Dr. al-Sadeeq intentionally, not only because of where they were
operating [Sadeeq works in the south, and Mahdi in the north] but also because
for me they’re heroes. They’re just such examples of these incredible women who
have dedicated their lives to the most fundamental thing: saving the life of a
child. And to me there’s no act greater than that.
Despite all
these challenges, they’ve dedicated their lives, both of them, to ensuring they
save every child they can. And this is sort of constant, invisible work against
the backdrop of an invisible war. It was part of the tension that we dealt with
in the filmmaking process—to choose a conflict that is killing so many
children, and yet there’s this inspiring work going on within that
context.
FP: How
did you build enough trust with the health care workers you were profiling that
they let you into pretty intimate spaces?
SF: Trust is everything. That was really the
foundation of the entire project, because without a strong foundation with
trust, we would never be allowed in those rooms for any amount of time, because
they’re intimate moments. It’s an intimate moment when a child is struggling to
draw their next breath because of the consequences of starvation. It’s an
intimate moment when a doctor is performing CPR on a young child.
I think the
reason that so many doctors and nurses and families were willing for us to
document and bear witness to such hard moments was because they want people to
know what’s happening. Despite the fact that foreign powers that have
intervened in Yemen, primarily Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have done a very
successful job of preventing journalists from accessing these stories, the
people themselves want them to get out. They want the rest of the world to know
that children are dying from famine in the country, by human-caused famine,
famine that’s bigger than locusts, droughts, or anything else. That sort of
desire for the Western world to know in the hope that the geopolitics can be
changed was very real and very consistent.
FP: What was the most challenging part?
SF: I would say one of the hardest parts of doing
this project was simply the process of telling these intimate stories. Children
died in front of us. It’s one thing to read about the effects of famine on
children; it’s a whole other thing to see a child suffering in front of you and
to know that your own government and your own tax dollars are funding the
famine. So that was difficult. That was day one. And every day that we
filmed had some event like that, so it takes a toll psychologically, and I
think you just have to be very conscious of it.
FP: What do you
hope people will take away from viewing this film?
I hope
people will be outraged when they see Hunger Ward.
SF: I hope people will be outraged when they
see Hunger Ward. Outraged that there’s a human-caused famine in
Yemen that the U.S. is supporting, and want to do something about it. That’s
been our sort of intent with the film from the outset.
Hopefully by
the end of this film, [viewers will] have a lot of questions. They’ll want to
know how and why this conflict developed. They’ll want to know our own
involvement in it, and hopefully want to know how they personally can intervene
and engage to end the conflict and U.S. involvement, because the good news is
that’s possible.
READ MORE
The Biden
Administration Should Prevent an ‘Atrocity Famine’ in Yemen
After declaring an end
to U.S. support for the Saudi-led offensive, there is more the president can
do.
ARGUMENT |
JEANNIE SOWERS, ERIKA WEINTHAL
In Yemen, No End
in Sight to the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis
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