Once the great hope of the Arab Spring, Yemen is now mired in conflict. British-Yemeni journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi reports on the unspoken tragedy

My feet have always been in two different worlds. I was born in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen in 1990. My father, a diplomat, brought us to London for work when I was one, but we would spend every summer back in Yemen. We would stay with my grandparents and I’d wake to the smell of freshly baked bread and spend all day outside playing with my cousins.

When I was 11, we returned to Yemen and stayed for a year. I loved spending time with my cousins, but even at that age, it was clear that our lives were different. Everyone at school wore abayas (a full-length robe) and a headscarf, whereas I had been looking forward to showing off my new Gap jumper and jeans.

Back in England, we spoke Arabic at home and ate Yemeni food – lots of lamb, chicken and rice. My parents wanted us to be proud of our heritage. We knew Sana’a was beautiful – a Unesco world heritage site brimming with ancient monuments, such as the Great Mosque which dates back to the seventh century. Yet children today can’t visit such places, or play games on the streets as my cousins and I used to. In fact, for many the streets I once played on are a no-go zone, buildings razed to the ground, and gunshots and shelling frequently claiming civilian lives. For the past year and a half, Yemen has been in the grip of a bitter conflict between forces loyal to the government and those allied to the Houthi rebels.

In March 2015, the deposed President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi asked Saudi Arabia to help kick the Houthis out of the country and within 48 hours Saudi was bombing Yemen, with the backing of the US and UK. The conflict is no nearer resolution. Fourteen million people are in desperate need of aid and 370,000 children are starving. Many children can no longer go to school because the buildings have been destroyed or are providing shelter to families who have lost their homes. “We are on the verge of a lost generation of children,” said Dr Peter Salama, Unicef regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, despite such horror, you rarely hear about it on the British news.

Yemen: the forgotton war zone