Crisis History

More than seven years of armed conflict have created catastrophic humanitarian needs in Yemen, uprooted millions of people from their homes, destroyed the econ-omy and fostered the spread of diseases, including COVID-19. The collapse of the economy, basic services, and public institutions, coupled with persistent import restrictions, are further eroding the resilience of people in Yemen, who have already endured one of the world's largest humanitarian crises and the world’s fourth-largest displacement crisis. Past development gains are being reversed, with population groups that were already experiencing heightened vulnerability dispro-portionately impacted, including women and children, people with disabilities, internally displaced persons (IDPs), migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, as well as marginalized groups such as the Muhamasheen.

Yemen’s economy has shrunk by half since 2015, with over 80 per cent of the pop-ulation living below the poverty line. The stark economic collapse has been most apparent in loss of income, depreciation of the Yemeni rial (YER), loss of govern-ment revenue, rising commodity prices and commercial import restrictions, includ-ing for fuel. Traditional sources of foreign currency such as remittances, oil exports, and bilateral funding streams remain suppressed.

Under these conditions, the price of food in Yemen nearly tripled between January 2015 and December 2020, and continued to increase in 2021. By December 2021, the national average cost of the minimum food basket (MFB) — an indicator of the cost of living — was some 80 per cent higher than at the start of the year, or around four times the MFB cost at the start of 2015. In December 2018, a food security survey confirmed for the first time ever that hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen would fall into famine-like conditions if large-scale humanitarian assistance remained absent. The risk of catastrophic food insecurity resurged in 2020 and 2021, as funding for the humanitarian operation in Yemen declined amidst further deterioration of the economy and renewed escalations of hostilities. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, food insecurity in Yemen deteriorated further in 2021, with 17.4 million people (IPC Phase 3 and above) in need of assistance in the first half of 2022, increasing to 19 million between June and the end of the year. Of these, some 7.1 million people are projected to face emergency conditions (IPC Phase 4).

The ongoing conflict continues to worsen the protracted crisis in Yemen. More than 4.3 million people have been displaced in Yemen since 2015, making it the world’s fourth largest internal displacement crisis. At least 286,700 people were estimated to have been displaced in 2021, many of them multiple times. By the end of 2021, estimates indicated that 21,780 civilians had reportedly been killed or injured as a direct result of hostilities since the onset of the conflict in Yemen. For 2022, it is reported that there are 23.4 million people in need of assistance in the country including 12.9 million in acute need. Twenty two percent are women, 55% children, and 15% with disabilities.

Only 51% of health facilities are still functioning. Many health staff have not received salaries for years due to the public deficit. The provision of medical sup-plies for routine programming and outbreak response is a huge constraint. Only 12% of vaccination centers are functional while an increased risk of disease outbreaks exists. Efforts are being made to scale up support of health care services, but there are great concerns that these remain out of reach for communi-ties in more remote areas.

In terms of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), 17.8 million people lack ade-quate access to safe WASH items due to damage to physical infrastructure and a lack of financial and other resources. Contaminated water sources, disruptions of the public health system, and collapsing WASH services are indicated as the key factors contributing to the unprecedented cholera outbreak. There have been over 2.5 million cases of cholera since 2017.

The acute symptoms of the crisis require the delivery of efficient and effective humanitarian assistance, while the protracted nature of the crisis necessitates sustainable solutions coordinated between humanitarian, development, and peace actors.