Fighting famine with food-security projects in Yemen

June 30, 2020

In a country like Yemen, where more than five years of war have created multiple crises for an already food-insecure population, late rains mean a family must choose between buying food or water; poor flood defences mean a farmer’s land lies fallow for a decade; and, a steep, unpaved road means a pregnant woman must risk her life to reach the nearest health centre.

However, famine response projects funded by donations from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) to the UNDP Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (YECRP) are helping to save lives and bring hope to hard-hit communities, where basic services have collapsed and food production fails to meet needs.

A boy fetches water with the help of his donkey. The new reservoir in Al Azariq, Ad Dhale, is safe and easily accessed by all. This project was funded and supported by the UNDP and KSRelief. | Photo Credit: UNDP Yemen

Across the country, KSRelief-supported YECRP projects target three key drivers of food insecurity: Lack of income, inadequate food production and gaps in critical services. By employing local workers, multiple drivers can be targeted at the same time, with communities not only gaining a new reservoir or safer road but also earning a wage as they work to improve their own local, vital services. 

Workers offload stones that will be used in the road construction project to ease the passage of people, animals, and cars in Jihaff, Ad Dhale. This project was funded by KSRelief. | Photo Credit: UNDP Yemen

For example, between September 2019 and May 2020, nearly 6500 Yemenis directly benefited from short-term, paid public work employment in 63 UNDP projects covering agricultural land protection, road rehabilitation, and water harvest and supply. At the same time, grants and technical support provided by UNDP and their local partners, including the Public Works Project (PWP), generated nearly 7,500 additional new jobs.

Before a new, safe water reservoir was built for residents from Gabal Al-Mafareg area in Damt, diseases such as malaria and bilharzia were common in children as residents were forced to drink from standing water sources far from home. Water scarcity has other knock-on effects, too. Collecting water is a job that falls to the women of the villages, who would previously spend about half the day doing so, explains Abdulateef Obaid, a 41-year-old father of seven. He adds that “when water is scarce, girls also drop out of school to help fetch it.”

The cost of water is volatile and is also quite expensive. “Around half of our monthly income is spent on the cost of water,” he says, and prices rise further if the rainy season starts late.

The new water tank in Gabal Al-Mafareg, Al Azariq, Ad Dhale,. This project was funded by KSRelief. | Photo Credit: UNDP Yemen

Local food production is also key to fighting famine in a country facing acute food shortages and where half of children are chronically malnourished. One project targeting agriculture in Ad Dhale has allowed residents to regain farmland that had been devastated by seasonal flooding.

“In 2010, the flood destroyed the wall of my farm and swept away half of the agricultural soil. I haven’t been able to cultivate it since,” explains Musaed Mosleh, a farmer from the region’s Al-Khama village in Wadi Bana. However, he notes that the new floodwalls can “withstand the powerful flow of the water because of the holes in them.” He started planting seeds with the advent of the rainy season in May and will grow tomatoes and potatoes or grains such as maize and sorghum. “We’ll benefit from these crops in addition to being able to use them as livestock feed,” he said.

Gabion walls in Damt district in Ad Dhalea governorate, This project was funded by KSRelief. | Photo Credit: UNDP Yemen.

In Jihaff district of Ad Dhale, a stretch of steep, dangerous road used by some 5,000 people has been paved, thanks to the work of a KSRelief-funded YECRP project. The road, often impassable during the rainy season, claimed the lives of many forced to risk the journey. Even during the dry season the poor conditions meant increased food and water delivery costs.

The new road “has restored our hope,” says Muhammad Al-Qahtani, a father of 10 from Al-Shima village – one of four villages that use the road to access schools, health facilities and work. And while Al-Qahtani says those “most affected by the [poor] road were pregnant women and the elderly travelling to the health facility… the road has imposed hardships on all of us.”

The road construction project in Jihaff, Ad Dhale. Photo Credit: UNDP Yemen

Like the projects to ensure clean, safe drinking water, or to improve agricultural practices, the road-paving project has brought work to the area as well as delivering on its primary goal. “The local inhabitants constitute our entire workforce,” says Ali Muhammad Saleh, a project consultant working on the road. “The workers are mainly from Al-Madad, Al-Shima and Al-Obal villages, [but] we also have five internally displaced people (IDPs) and 10 returnees.”

Ad Dhale is just one example of the essential works saving lives across Yemen. Between September 2019 and May 2020, YECRP, with funds from KSRelief, implemented 20 agricultural land protection projects, 19 road rehabilitation projects, 13 water harvesting and 11 water supply projects. In all, these projects benefited more than 231,000 community members as well as providing local workers with jobs and changing lives over the long term.