SANAA — Nearly half the children in Yemen are suffering from malnutrition, the agriculture minister has said, as insurgencies, water scarcity and climate change exacerbate sectarian strife in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest state.

“More than half the population of Yemen suffers from food insecurity… 48 percent of the children suffer from malnutrition,” Agriculture Minister Farid Mujawar told a U.N. conference in Rome on Wednesday.

“We know this challenge of hunger has a major impact on health and education at every stage… it cannot be deemed acceptable.”

As hunger falls globally, Mujawar used the Food and Agriculture Organization’s second summit on nutrition to ask the international community for more aid.

Short of food, running out of oil and water, Yemen is facing rising violence, which analysts believe is linked to environmental degradation and growing groups of hungry, angry people with few prospects.

“Environmental breakdown encourages social breakdown,” Mark Katz, a politics professor at George Mason University, said. “It doesn’t seem that Yemen will be able to turn this around.”

Government revenues from crude oil exports, a key source of financing for the state, dropped almost 35 percent in the first nine months of 2014 to $1.34 billion from $2.04 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to figures released on Monday.

The drop follows months of political turmoil. Shi’a Muslim Houthi fighters have been in control of the capital, Sanaa, since September and continue to battle al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni tribesmen, as the state’s security forces lose control of the country.