1. Introduction
From the wealthy kingdom the Queen of Sheba to the “Arabia Felix” on Roman maps, Yemen was historically known as a rich, fertile, and fortunate land. In the late twentieth century, however, Yemen’s economic growth was stalled by a weak central government and complex tribal patronage system. Unlike other neighboring Gulf states, Yemen has very limited oil reserves, and remittance income from migrants became a major source of income, displacing investment in agricultural production. Coupled with high population growth, Yemen increasingly became dependent on imported food supplies. Poverty and malnutrition rates were also high. In 2013, 46.5% of children under 5 in Yemen were stunted and 16.3% suffered from acute malnutrition (Yemen DHS 2013). These development challenges in Yemen exploded into a humanitarian emergency with the beginning of the ongoing war in 2015.
Currently, it is estimated that more than half of children in Yemen are malnourished and all areas of the country are classified as in crisis or worse by IPC. With a population of approximately 20 million, this makes Yemen by some accounts the largest humanitarian crisis in the world at present. Assessments of the situation also emphasize that the situation would be worse without ongoing humanitarian support. In the period from 2015-2022, an estimated 16 billion dollars was donated and spent through the interagency standing committee coordinated appeal. The World Food Program alone supports nearly 13 million of the most vulnerable people with emergency food assistance (WFP 2023).
The humanitarian response in Yemen is one of the largest in the world and many of the challenges and lessons in the response to the food security crisis in Yemen are generalizable more broadly to fragile and conflict-affected settings and import-dependent settings. Most broadly, the challenge in Yemen has been to balance the short-term perspective of needing to respond to an emergency situation with the realization that after over eight years of conflict, longer-term needs and interests also have to be considered. In particular, lessons from Yemen include the degree to which import dependence increases vulnerability, the potential for expanded use of cash transfers, the importance of supporting the private business in the agro-food sector even during a humanitarian crisis, the role of local organizations, and the challenges of coordination on targeting.
2. Import dependence increases vulnerability
Even prior to the ongoing war, Yemen was highly dependent on imports for its food security, and local agricultural production suffered further during conflict. Imported wheat is a staple food source and poor households rely on wheat for almost the entirety of their calorie needs. This structure increased household vulnerability as the local price of wheat is highly affected by global price shocks, macroeconomic shocks, and conditions at Yemen’s main international ports.
Yemen’s food import dependence was most obviously a threat in an earlier period of the conflict in late 2017 to early 2018 when control of the port city of Al Hodeidah was contested and imports were blocked. Households reported greater food insecurity during this period, with a statistically significant increase measured in types of potentially harmful coping strategies employed such as skipping meals and eating lower quantities of food, and corresponding decrease measured in dietary quality as captured by the food consumption score (Tandon and Vishwanath, 2020). The political resolution of this blockade was vital, and the markets for staple foods have since functioned relatively well, and absolute shortages are not generally reported in market monitoring surveys;[1] however, affordability remains a key challenge.
The conflict has increased the cost of imported food for Yemenis. Increased restrictions on fuel imports, together with other diversions and tariffs, keep fuel prices high compared to other countries in the region and far above the subsidized price that prevailed prior to the conflict (Thomas 2022). In turn these high fuel tariffs, together with long delays caused by checkpoints and damaged infrastructure, have increased costs of internal transportation within Yemen. Private sector food importers also face high costs related to challenges of accessing finance due to financial sanctions, costs related to delays at ports for inspections, and increased insurance costs caused by the conflict situation.
Additionally, the high import reliance means that global price shocks and terms of trade shocks have severe impacts on household’s ability to afford wheat flour. Notably, when global wheat and fuel prices rose in early 2022 in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, Yemeni households experienced higher prices locally. Staple food affordability has also been challenged by the declining purchasing power of the Yemeni Riyal. While the official exchange rate appears stable, the market determined parallel exchange rate reveals the rapid depreciation of the currency in the southern governorates controlled by the internationally recognized government where excess printing of new bank notes has resulted in high inflation.
In spite of the price rises, imported wheat remains the cheapest calorie source available in Yemen, so households are forced to spend an increasing share of their income for this essential commodity. In a survey of poor households in Al Hodeidah, calorie consumption from staple grains increased significantly during the conflict even as prices rose, and wheat consumption was highest as a share of consumption for the poorest households and those in villages with the highest reported prices (Kurdi et al. 2019).
Meanwhile, local production of staple food items is very low due to high production of the highly valued narcotic khat, combined with unpredictable rainfall and depleted groundwater resources, and decades-long under-investment in the agricultural sector.
Reducing vulnerability for Yemeni households requires thinking beyond short-term emergency food distribution to supporting agricultural recovery.
3. Cash transfers can work and have significant nutritional benefits
Cash-based programming for humanitarian responses has emerged as a growing trend in the past decade following widespread acceptance of cash-transfers in development programming (ODI 2015). Cash transfers are more easily scalable and cheaper than in-kind assistance and less distorting of local production systems. Studies in a variety of contexts also suggest that distributing cash leads to greater dietary diversity than baskets of staple food items, because households prefer to use some of the cash to buy non-staple food items such as locally produced fruits, vegetables, and animal products.
Yemen is prime example of a protracted crisis context, in which humanitarian food aid is no longer focused on short-term relief, but has become a long-term reality and major component of the national food supply. More than half of households in Yemen receive some form of food assistance. This persistent situation means that the nutritional composition of diets (especially for sensitive groups like young children and expectant mothers) is as important as sufficient calories as there are life-long developmental consequences of childhood malnutrition (Leroy et al. 2019).
The benefits of cash transfers are particularly compelling when compared to costs. It is estimated that in the Yemen emergency response, in-kind food distribution had administrative costs amounting to approximately 77% of the value of the direct benefits received compared to only 16 to 17% for cash transfers or food vouchers (Ghorpade and Ammar 2021).
Research confirms that cash transfers worked well in Yemen at increasing dietary quality. An impact evaluation of the current Cash-for-Nutrition program of the Yemen Social Fund for Development (SFD), conducted during the civil war from 2015 to 2017, showed that cash transfers generated substantial benefits for child nutrition (Kurdi 2021). Cash for Nutrition provides households with young children with cash transfers equivalent to about 25% of their monthly food budget and provides monthly child and maternal nutrition education sessions led by locally-recruited community health educators.
The evaluation found that the program increased household food purchases by at least 17 percent and importantly that most of that increase came from purchases of nutrient-rich foods such as vegetables, fruits, milk, and eggs. Staple food consumption was unchanged. The program also significantly increased the number of food groups consumed by children ages 6-23 months, a critical window for early childhood development, by 0.45 food groups compared to a baseline mean of 3.0 on scale where 4 food groups is considered a minimally acceptable diet. Finally, the program significantly increased the probability of early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding for babies under 6 months, and treating drinking water (Kurdi et al. 2020).
Through the combination of these improved nutritional practices and better food access, the Cash for Nutrition program decreased the rate at which children were diagnosed with acute malnutrition by 10 percentage points and prevented decreases in height-for-age and weight-for-age among children in the poorest third of eligible households.
Supporting evidence on the nutritional benefits of cash transfers in the Yemeni context is also provided by research conducted prior to the civil war. A comparison of food and cash assistance using a randomized control trial in Yemen prior to the current conflict found that cash transfers resulted in more nutritious diets for beneficiaries than equivalently-valued cash transfers (Schwab 2020). Similarly, analysis of panel data collected in 2012-2013 also found that while conflict was associated with higher rates of malnutrition, cash transfers decreased the negative impact of conflict on acute malnutrition by at least half (Ecker 2021).
4. Traders and other agro-food sector actors need support
In spite of the massive food distribution effort, the private sector still supplies the majority of food to households in Yemen. The humanitarian response has the potential to work together with the private agro-food sector to create greater resilience in the Yemeni economy, which in turn is vital to long-term food security.
Households in Yemen rely on small traders to purchase food on credit, so ensuring the sustainability of these small businesses indirectly benefits the households that take advantage of their services.
Approximately half of the food that households purchase is made on credit rather than in cash and the majority of small traders allow the use of credit (Kurdi 2021). By allowing purchases on credit without charging interest for late payments, small traders also play an important role in supporting risk-sharing at the local level. A model of small trader price-setting behavior that incorporates features described by Yemeni informants highlights that because all households using a particular shop tacitly agree to pay higher prices at local shops in exchanges for potential support from shopkeepers to be patient with repayment in times of crisis, the store acts as an informal insurance broker (Kurdi 2016).
Understanding the role of small traders in food security highlights the importance of combining humanitarian relief with development responses that help support small businesses and using cash-based approaches where possible.
In-kind food distribution can also be better integrated with the local market. A qualitative study found that the pilot Healthy Kitchen program in Yemen for providing school children with more diversified meals including fruits, vegetables, and sandwiches is extremely popular with beneficiaries as an alternative to distribution of high energy biscuits and date bars because of the greater variety and palatability of food, and the majority of the ingredients are able to be locally sourced, supporting Yemeni farmers (Bliznashka et al. unpublished).
In recent years, there has been an increasing realization that more international funding needs to be directed to development efforts in Yemen alongside traditional humanitarian response. With the relative peace since the truce in 2022, the scaling up of public works programs, support for farmers, and small business and value chain development are starting up in parallel with the continuation of food distribution and aid. A potential challenge is that traditional development interventions may fare less well in conflict-affected settings. A graduation program approach, for example, had much less satisfying results in Yemen than in other stable contexts, likely related to the added challenge for households of being faced with frequent shocks related to the conflict (Brune et al. 2022). The effectiveness of development remains to be measured, but anecdotally it is highly demanded within Yemen as people say they want to return to the dignity of providing for themselves rather than relying on handouts.
Rather than seeing conflict-affected contexts as fully devastated economies that need to be kept on life-support until conflict ends followed by complete rebuilding, it is worth understanding that trade continues during conflict, albeit at a higher cost and complexity than during peacetime. For this reason, investing in infrastructure construction, marketing support, and supporting agreements even at the local level to reduce trade restrictions and checkpoints is an important part of the broad goal of supporting sustainable food security.
5. Running interventions through local institutions contributes to sustainability
One of the notable successes in the Yemen humanitarian response has been to maintain some of the key national institutions as partners. Emergency support provided by international development assistance has been channeled through the Social Fund for Development, the Public Works Program, and the Social Welfare Fund, pre-existing national institutions that have maintained working relationships with both sides of the ongoing conflict (Ugo et al. 2018). The Social Fund for Development, for example, had been successful prior to the war in developing stakeholder ownership and trust through a decentralized approach and strong commitment to political neutrality (Al Iryani et al. 2015). In the eventual recovery, this will create the basis for re-establishment of a good governance through a nationally-owned and controlled social protection system, rather than enforcing dependency on external institutions.
As an example of some of the measurable benefits of this approach, comparing survey data from before and after participation, employees in a community-driven development program run by the Yemeni Social Fund for Development had significantly more trust in local government and other local institutions such as tribes and government officials as well as more optimistic perceptions about the potential for local community level cooperation (Bertelli et al. 2019).
6. Data, targeting, and funding remain key challenges
One of the main challenges identified in the Yemen humanitarian crisis has been a lack of coordination and data sharing, leading to imperfect targeting and lack of a cohesive response.
The general challenges with on the ground data collection mean that targeting is highly reliant on extrapolation from limited survey data, combined with poverty estimates generated before the war. While the existence of the Social Welfare Fund directory of beneficiaries provided a helpful starting point for individual targeting, the lists are widely known to be outdated lists.
An evaluation of the targeting effectiveness of the initial humanitarian response in Yemen in 2017 based on mobile phone monitoring data showed that aid delivery was concentrated in areas of higher need, but that there was room for improvement as food distribution adjusted to changes in announced IPC classifications, but not by enough to prevent deterioration in household food security in the most deprived areas (Tandon and Vishwanath 2021).
The various organizations working in Yemen even within the UN system have their own targeting methodologies and approaches. Both through donors and through the cluster system, there are ongoing efforts to better coordinate these approaches to prevent unintended duplication and to create synergies, where possible, through “geobundling” interventions in the same areas, but coordination is still an administratively difficult and time-consuming process.
Finally, the Yemen humanitarian response remains highly dependent on international donors, and vulnerable to funding shortfalls which are likely to continue.
7. Conclusion
How to best support household food security in Yemen is a vital question given the scale of the humanitarian emergency. An emerging body of rigorous research contributes to identifying some key lessons learned from the experience in this country, which can be applied beyond Yemen: countries with high food import dependence are particularly at risk during conflict but may also find the greatest benefits from cash-based assistance; market actors are also important, including particularly small traders which are often overlooked in thinking about food systems; and working through local institutions appears to have potential for maintaining national governance infrastructure.
This review has also highlighted the degree to which research can be done and is currently ongoing even in difficult settings to help answer important questions about the effectiveness of the humanitarian response at protecting household food security.
References
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[1] See REACH Yemen Joint Market Monitoring reports.