Shelter/NFI/CCCM Cluster Information Management Strategy for Yemen 2018-2019
. Context
According to 2018 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), around 18.7 million people are in need of humanitarian support of which around 5.4 million people needed emergency shelter, essential household items, and site management support as their basic needs become more acute. Many have been trapped in conflict-affected locations and are at risk for living in damaged shelters and unfinished buildings. Their degree of resilience and positive coping mechanism have reduced due to the protracted nature of the conflict. The ability to provide their basic household needs have decreased due to the economic recession that left hundred thousands of Yemeni people unemployed. Salaries for health facility staff, teachers and other public sector workers go increasingly unpaid, leaving 1.25 million state employees and their 6.9 million dependents or nearly 30 per cent of the population without an income at a time of shortages and rising prices.
As of 1 August 2018, the Task Force for Population Movement (TFPM) which is a Technical Working Group to the Inter-Cluster Coordination Mechanism (ICCM) has identified, 2,331,264 internally displaced persons (IDPs) (388,544 households) who have been displaced due to conflict and natural disasters since March 2015, dispersed across 22 governorates. The current number of displaced persons represent 7% of total Yemeni population based on Yemen’s pre-crisis population of 28,923,127 individuals. The majority of IDPs are living with host.
For the same period, the TFPM has identified 1,012,464 returnees (168,744 households), across 22 governorates. The majority of returnees are residing in their original house of habitual residence.
Immediate emergency assistance for newly displaced families remains a significant challenge as the majority of displaced families tend to live in precarious situations for several weeks before basic emergency shelter and NFI assistance can be provided. Majority of IDPs in Yemen are living with host families but displacement already lasted longer than anticipated, resources run out and the capacity of host families is extremely stretched. In other hand, over course of the year, an increasing number of IDPs families who are living in rented accommodation admitted to owing their landlords large sums of money for rent, others left their rented accommodation out of shame or were forced out by the landlords and ended up residing in IDPs hosting sites or host families. The percentage of populations in IDP Hosting sites rose from 19 per cent at the end of 2016 to 23 percent at the end of the September 2017, indicating that people are running out of adequate shelter options. Support to families living in IDP hosting sites is also critical as the IDP hosting sites baseline assessment for 18 governorates indicated that 75 percent of the sites have no site management focal point present at the site whom expected to act as an advocate for populations residing in IDPs hosting sites to ensure provision of response to emerging needs at the site-level. Close to 69 percent of the sites report water shortage and only about 58 percent of the sites have some sort of access to latrines and 59 percent to showers. Just under 8 percent of the sites reported having access to health services. As the displacement becomes more protracted target population groups including IDPs, Host communities and returnees are expected to increase and the needs to become more acute.
This situation has led to high level of dependency on the humanitarian support including on the repeated provision of emergency shelter and essential household items as the conflict continues. However, addressing this challenge among humanitarian agencies has been challenging due to operational complexities, limited humanitarian space they are operating within and lack of funding. The widespread insecurity that hampers area physical access, bureaucratic procedures, unpredictable access to affected areas and restrictive operating environment are some of the variables that contribute to this limitation. This reality has put constraints in the collection of primary, comprehensive and real-time information about the crisis and created an information gap on the plight of the affected population and their real needs. This has further led to dependency on secondary data sources as the basis for programmatic planning, which in most cases are not representative and often based on estimations with a high level of subjectivity.
This lack of accurate, complete and credible information of the affected population does not just paralyze the ability of the humanitarian community to respond in a timely and effective manner but also affects the ability of the population in need to claim their rights and entitlements. It is for this reason that Information Management Strategy is created.
