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Yemen

Preventing Famine in Yemen - IFRR Strategic Note - Final Update Version 5.0, 20th March, 2024 [EN/AR]

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After one and a half year of implementation of the Integrated Famine Risk Reduction (IFRR) initiative in the country, this IFRR note is updated to inform 2024 strategic focus for the Yemen IFRR group. The IFRR group is made up of representation from the Food Security and Agriculture cluster (FSAC), nutrition cluster, Health cluster and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster (WASH). The context is rapidly evolving and the work of the IFRR group has provided a refined understanding of challenges and potentials. As a result, the IFRR group considered it necessary to revise the strategic note to reflect a comprehensive review of the situation, needs prioritization, implementation strategy, and monitoring framework. The strategy remains a living document and could be revised based on what can be turned into practical guidance for future interventions, offering valuable insights to enhance humanitarian efforts.

Introductory framework

Famines are mainly man-made due to a breakdown in the social and economic system that produce and distribute food; climatic shocks are generally only a contributing factor, for instance when insufficient rains lead to a failure to produce adequate food quantities and sustain livestock. The approach to address famine needs to consider the combination of factors that affect food production systems, markets functionality, institutions, and essential infrastructures. Conflicts often play a major role in acute food security crisis leading to famine situations and needs as well to be certainly addressed. Famine prevention encompasses the four dimensions that are political, economic, social, and emergency response.

Rebuilding resilient food systems to avoid famine is a long-term process and relies on the sustained commitment of national authorities and development & humanitarian aid actors to work towards rural development and food security. This implies the use of integrated approaches in key sectors such as agriculture, water and sanitation facilities, health, nutrition, public works, and rural development. Interventions should be carefully designed, implemented, and monitored to ensure they fit into the reliefresilience-development continuum.

The IFRR in Yemen initially focused on the Emergency Assistance dimension by favouring convergence at the Clusters level between Food Security & Agriculture, Nutrition, WASH and Health. Recent reflections have pushed the IFRR group to consider enlarging its focus area. In fact, the reconstruction of a social fabric with a community focus, the building of resilient food systems in complementarity with longer term economic strategies are essential and need to complement humanitarian interventions. Therefore, while previously IFRR was limiting itself to linkages with the Nexus and Social Protection programmes (such as safety nets) at the strategic and conceptual level to encourage needed complementarities, it will now engage further within the Nexus framework and promote more action addressing the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition. IFRR will as well engage more with RCO (Resident Coordinator Office) to collaborate on early development approaches. This will be done at the cluster level and through IFRR coordination group members. Similar engagements will be promoted at donors’ level.