Lessons learned on food security in the Yemen crisis

Kurdi, Sikandra. 2024. Lessons learned on food security in the Yemen crisis. Scripta Varia 154: 209-217. https://www.pas.va/en/publications/scripta-varia/sv154pas/kurdi.html

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.