EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report provides an overview of the Yemen Humanitarian Fund (YHF) monitoring activities from 1 January to 31 December 2020, analyses monitoring results and provides a summary of key recommendations shared with partners. The report builds on earlier YHF monitoring reports covering 2018 and 2019.

Despite access challenges, COVID-19-related restrictions and other constraints, the YHF conducted 165 monitoring visits in 2020, thereby fulfilling all of its 2020 monitoring requirements. However, the YHF changed the modality of many monitoring missions from the OCHA Humanitarian Financing Unit staff visits to monitoring by Third-Party Monitoring (TPM) companies.

Fifty-six per cent of monitoring missions assessed YHF-funded projects as performing well, 35 per cent as underperforming but for reasons beyond the partners’ control, and 8 per cent as underperforming, without an adequate justification.

The YHF reached 12,508 people through remote call Beneficiary Verification Surveys (BVS), which supplemented selected monitoring missions. The surveys were conducted by trained data collectors who administered structured questionnaires. The respondents were randomly selected from distribution lists and constituted a representative sample of project beneficiaries. Out of the 12,508 interviewed people, 12,302 confirmed that they received assistance and 96 per cent of them expressed satisfaction with the services they received.

The YHF made 914 recommendations from 2020 monitoring missions, shared them with implementing partners, and followed up on the actions taken by partners to address them to ensure efficient and effective project delivery. In addition, the Fund provided timely updates to cluster coordinators and hub managers with key monitoring findings upon review of monitoring reports to ensure that the findings of YHF monitoring can be used by the broader humanitarian community.

As part of its commitment to improve Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), the YHF launched a Beneficiary Feedback and Complaints Mechanism (BFCM) in February 2020. The mechanism enabled beneficiaries to directly call or send a text message to a dedicated toll-free phone number and file complaints or feedback regarding YHF-funded projects. Between February and December 2020, feedback was received from 1,775 beneficiaries on 66 YHF-funded projects. The Fund shared the feedback received with implementing partners and tracked the actions taken by partners until complaints were resolved.

Most complaints received were in relation to minor dissatisfaction with the assistance received.

Some of the key challenges for YHF monitoring in 2020 included travel restrictions; continued bureaucratic impediments, such as the need for prolonged negotiations with national and sub-national authorities to secure travel permits for TPM contractors; inadequate technical skills among some field monitors; poor quality of some TPM reports; long delays in providing required monitoring documents by some YHF partners; and poor mobile network coverage limiting the ability to reach some beneficiaries with phone interviews.