Yemen interim country strategic plan (2023–2025)

ICSP approved at EB November 2022 session

The crisis in Yemen is now in its eighth year. A “perfect storm” of conflict, the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, economic shocks, access constraints and natural disasters has led to an escalating humanitarian crisis. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis for 2022 reveals an increasingly dire humanitarian situation with projections for the remainder of the year indicating that 19 million people (60 percent of the population) will experience acute food insecurity, which for 7.3 million will reach emergency levels or catastrophic famine-like conditions. High intergenerational levels of stunting and anaemia and widespread chronic malnutrition exacerbate the acute nutrition crisis, with 538,000 children under the age of 5 predicted to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition and a further 1.56 million at risk of moderate acute malnutrition.

Over the coming three to five years there is likely to be continuing deterioration of the food security and nutrition situation in Yemen, driven in part by economic spillover effects from the Ukraine crisis. The situation will require humanitarian actors to continue responding to overwhelming needs while seeking local opportunities to begin addressing the long-term needs, risks and vulnerabilities of Yemenis. In response, and leveraging WFP’s multidimensional mandate, this interim country strategic plan will enable WFP to continue to deliver an effective, prioritized and sustained humanitarian response on a massive scale that addresses the increasing needs while advancing the complementary elements of humanitarian and recovery-oriented programming to protect capacity gains and lay the foundations for long-term development and peace. WFP will continue to be guided by humanitarian principles and a conflict-sensitive approach.

Following on from the current interim country strategic plan, the plan for 2023–2025 is based on three interlinked and mutually reinforcing pillars: life-saving assistance, recovery interventions and an initial response to structural issues, and enabling services. It is in line with WFP’s strategic plan for 2022–2025 and has the following four outcomes:

➢ Outcome 1: Crisis-affected women, men, girls and boys across Yemen are able to meet their immediate food and nutrition needs all year.

➢ Outcome 2: Targeted population groups across Yemen, including school-aged girls and boys and nutritionally vulnerable and at-risk groups, have access to basic services throughout the year.

➢ Outcome 3: Food-insecure households and communities in targeted areas across Yemen, including those affected by climate shocks, benefit from more resilient livelihoods and food systems throughout the year.

➢ Outcome 4: Humanitarian and development partners collaborate effectively to assist people in Yemen and to preserve critical services all year.

Reflecting the evolving international response, WFP will leverage its standing as the largest humanitarian actor in Yemen to advance an interoperable and people-centred response, enabling improved coordination and shared approaches to the gender-responsive assessment, targeting and delivery of assistance. In line with its gender policy for 2022–2026, WFP will assess how gender, age, disability and related discrimination drive food insecurity and malnutrition and will use the results to inform programming. Supported by the implementation of its protection and accountability strategy, the country office will combine innovative two-way community engagement and an expanded field monitoring presence with a view to ensuring an inclusive, safe and adaptable humanitarian response.

Following an approach centred on the humanitarian–development–peace nexus, WFP will focus on achieving synergies across its humanitarian and recovery-oriented programming while promoting stability. It will use its malnutrition prevention and school meals activities as platforms for easing suffering and contributing to a holistic “first 8,000 days” approach. WFP will also expand activities aimed at strengthening livelihoods and food systems, including in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The activities will build capacity and assets and strengthen the resilience of households and communities to shocks and stresses while promoting gender equality and people’s agency. Building on global experience and partnerships, WFP will lay the ground for future social safety nets and extend the use of its expertise in assessment, targeting and beneficiary management into the social protection domain.

The interim country strategic plan is aligned with the United Nations humanitarian response plan for 2022, the Yemen economic framework of October 2021 and the “exceptionally endorsed” transitional United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for 2022–2024, thereby laying the foundations for progress towards Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 17 in Yemen.