A/HRC/42/CRP.1 793. Even before the conflict broke out, Yemen had the lowest per capita gross domestic product in the Middle East.1269 On the Human Development Index, it has been ranking among the worst performing nations for health and education, falling back from the 161 st position in 2014 to 178th in 2018.1270 Yemen is highly dependent on international trade. Prior to the conflict, Yemen was importing 90 percent of its food, 85 percent of medical supplies and the majority of its fuel.1271 The limitation of exports and essential imports due to the access restrictions described above, mainly the blockade by the coalition, is the main factor behind the decline of the economy. Inspection mechanisms, congestion at ports, and destroyed infrastructure are significant factors that have caused a rise in food prices. “Significant delays in food imports and marked up prices have increased the cost for food to the extent that it has become out of reach for most of the population, even though food has been readily available in large quantities in the markets.”1272 794. Rapid currency depreciation due to inflation added to the increase of the price of imports. In the absence of official figures, the World Bank estimates that inflation has continued to rise while the gross domestic product contracted by a total of 39 percent since 2014 and the start of the war.1273 As the deepening inflation has drastically inhibited the purchasing power of a significant part of the population, it has become increasingly difficult for Yemeni families on or below the poverty line to afford basic needs like food and water, further exacerbating the crisis.1274 According to Peter Salisbury, journalist and political economy analyst, “the economic crisis comes at a time when aid agencies, traders, and government institutions are struggling, for a variety of reasons, to deliver much-needed basic goods, and when prices are rising to the point where a large proportion of the population simply cannot afford to eat, in no small part because the overall economy has ground to a halt.”1275 795. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in Yemen in February 2019 “[t]he minimum survival [food] basket cost remains more than 110 percent higher than prior to the conflict’s escalation in March 2015.”1276 Calling the situation an “income famine”, Lise Grande, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, declared that “[t]he key to stopping it is to ensure that people have enough money to buy what they need to survive”.1277 The dependency on imports cannot be compensated by humanitarian aid alone.1278 1269 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, at 1 (2014), available at https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/weodata/index.aspx. 1270 Yemen Human Development Indicators, UNDP, available at: http://www.hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/YEM. 1271 Security Council Report, “In Hindsight: The Story of the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism in Yemen”, September 2016 (https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthlyforecast/201609/the_story_of_the_un_verification_and_inspection_mechanism_in_yemen.php?print=true). 1272 Oxfam, Missiles and Food: Yemen’s Manmade Crisis (June 7, 2019) available at https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/bn-missiles-food-security-yemen-201217en.pdf. 1273 Yemen’s Economic Update – April 2019, The World Bank (Apr. 1, 2019), https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/yemen/publication/economic-update-april-2019. 1274 According to the WFP, by February 2019, the Yemeni rial had depreciated 165 percent compared to the U.S. dollar in the pre-conflict era. See Yemen Market Watch Report, World Food Programme, No. 33, 1 (Feb. 2019), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000103864/download/. 1275 Peter Salisbury, “Bickering While Yemen Burns: Poverty, War, and Political Indifference”, The Arab Gulf States Institute In Washington, June 22, 2017, p. 1. 1276 Quoted in Yemen – Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #4, FY 2019 (Feb. 8, 2019), https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/yemen_ce_fs04_02-08-2019.pdf 1277 Declan Walsh & Tyler Hicks, The Tragedy of Saudi Arabia’s War, N.Y. Times (Oct. 29, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-war-yemen.html. 1278 Security Council Report, “In Hindsight: The Story of the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism in Yemen”, September 2016 (https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthlyforecast/201609/the_story_of_the_un_verification_and_inspection_mechanism_in_yemen.php?print=true). 190