Yemen: savings lives and livelihoods despite compounding crises

A virtual high-level pledging event on Yemen convened resource partners and UN agencies, funds and programmes to speak in urgent terms on the need to commit resources and actions to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis

27 September, New York - Organized by the European Union, Switzerland and Sweden, the pledging event held last week on the side lines of the UN General Assembly, stressed the unprecedented humanitarian needs in Yemen, advocating for urgent action from the international community and calling on resource partners to pledge and disburse additional funding that is commensurate with the alarming humanitarian needs on the ground. 

Under the theme “Yemen: Responding to the crises within the world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” the event centered on scaling up immediate and life-saving assistance, but not without losing sight of the long-term needs of the Yemeni population and the underlying drivers that led to the current crises to begin with, such as currency devaluations, protracted conflict, marked poverty and inequality.

Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and former Special Envoy for Yemen, provided opening remarks. He called for urgent and decisive action.

“Yemenis need more than our words or our good intentions. They need our action, and without it, they cannot weather future months of this very long crisis and would be unable to build that safer world, that safer future – one of safety, dignity, and self-reliance,” he said. 

Echoing this message across the board were government and development representatives in attendance, urging for Yemen’s humanitarian response to look beyond the urgent needs of today and also focus, in parallel, on rehabilitating key organizational and institutional pillars for a prosperous Yemen tomorrow as part of a longer-term response.

Supporting agricultural livelihoods and infrastructure to prevent looming famine

FAO’s work in Yemen is a prime example of the arduous, yet all the more necessary, task of responding to crises within a crisis, each of which is multifaceted in nature and closely interconnected.

The impacts of a desert locust upsurge on crops and pastures, natural disasters and economic downturns associated with COVID-19 have exacerbated a country-wide crisis that has been brewing over the past seven years of conflict. This has led to a sharp increase in the already dangerously high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, especially among agricultural and pastoral communities.

“In a country where two out of three people depend on agricultural livelihoods, the need to restore and protect their ability to produce food and generate income cannot be overstated. Rural livelihoods remain the greatest defence against famine,” Hussein Gadain, FAO Representative in Yemen, stated on the occasion of the pledging event.

Indeed, conflict remains the major driver of food insecurity in Yemen. The loss of livelihoods and income, coupled with increases in the price of basic commodities, are also contributing factors to the present crisis. What’s more, unpredictable fluctuations in the exchange rate and credit restrictions have impacted imports. The collapse of public services and social safety nets and the erosion of coping mechanisms have made millions of Yemenis more vulnerable to economic and climate shocks.

A toxic combination of factors has therefore converged to erode the ability of households to meet their minimum food needs, pushing 5 million Yemenis to the very edge of starvation. Nearly 50 000 are facing famine-like conditions right now.

“As the conflict persists, it is increasingly critical to provide families with the means to protect their food security and household incomes,” Gadain stressed.

A man-made humanitarian emergency

The conflict, climate and economic crisis are, to a large extent, man-made. It is not too late to get back on track to save lives, though. 

Even before the conflict, however, Yemen was prone to chronic food insecurity due, in part, to its reliance on imports for over 75 percent of its national food requirements. In addition, 80 percent of Yemenis were already living below the poverty line. This points to the need for humanitarian and sustainable assistance that understands the root causes of the emergency at hand and foresees the needs moving forward to build effective, sustainable, resilient and inclusive agri-food systems that generate income and enable people to feed themselves.

Agriculture remains critical to the future of the country

FAO is not only working to enable families to produce food for themselves and their communities when markets are disrupted but also to safeguard, protect and restore Yemen's agriculture sector. Agriculture is the backbone of Yemeni livelihoods and the most important non-oil sector of the economy, providing  food and income for up to 70 percent of the rural population, inclusive of over 87 percent of rural women. As such, FAO firmly believes that rehabilitating agricultural and rural livelihoods is integral to the humanitarian response in Yemen. 

With this aim in mind, FAO is working to improve the ability of the most vulnerable Yemeni households to feed themselves. In 2020 alone, FAO facilitated productive and resilient livelihood options to more than 1.3 million people via activities and programs like: provision of vital crop/livestock inputs, protection of livestock assets through animal vaccinations, cash-based transfers, and surveillance and control assistance of plant threats, such as desert locus and fall army worm. 

Still, farmers and pastoralists today need immediate assistance in the form of life-saving inputs like seeds and cash if they are to have a fighting chance at maintaining their food production in the upcoming season, which has already started this month and runs through December.

FAO calls for pressing support in mobilizing USD 57.5 million, 64 percent of its initial 90 million appeal to respond to the immediate needs of approximately 3.6 million acutely vulnerable people through the end of 2021. 

“FAO’s humanitarian funding for Yemen this year remains well below what is needed; as of today, just under 13 percent of the funding required has been received,” Gadain noted, adding: “Without immediate additional resources, hundreds of thousands of highly vulnerable, conflict-affected, agriculture-dependent households across Yemen will be at risk of sliding further into famine-like conditions”. 

Related links

• Watch the recording here.
• Learn more about FAO’s Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen.
• Save the date for the upcoming high-level event “Action in Support of Preventing and Ending Famine Now,” scheduled for 4 October, where the FAO Director-General will participate.