One year ago, the International Rescue Committee warned that stability in Yemen would not be possible while "more than half of the population do not know where their next meal is coming from". This past month's events have borne out that monition. Violence in the country, which has affected 18 of its 22 governorates and morphed into an all-out proxy war between regional powers, has brought Yemen to the brink of collapse. A humanitarian crisis of immense magnitude looms.

Yemen was already in a desperately fragile state before simmering, months-long violence in the country boiled over in March. According to UN figures, almost 16 million people - 61 percent of the total population - required humanitarian assistance, hundreds of thousands of them displaced by waves of conflict over the past decade.