EU provides €5.9 million for FAO-led efforts to strengthen Yemen's capacity to monitor drivers of food insecurity and hunger

As the fragile peace in Yemen holds and with serious food insecurity concerns persisting, the European Union (EU) and FAO have announced new EU funding of €5.9 million ($6.7 million) to support the UN agency’s work to build the country’s capacity to monitor threats to food security and collect key data on hunger and malnutrition.

Accurate, comprehensive data/information on threats to livelihoods and households’ food security status are critical to effectively target humanitarian assistance to where and when it is most needed.

FAO’s efforts also aim to improve Yemen’s ability to monitor emerging threats to food security and livelihoods, such as poor weather or crop pests and diseases, so that appropriate livelihood support – irrigation services, or feed for livestock, for example – can be provided, before impacts are felt.

“Availability of reliable and timely data not only means we can respond better when crises impact food security, as is the case now – it is also the foundation on which the government, humanitarian and development agencies can build up people’s resilience, to withstand future food insecurity,” said FAO’s Country Representative in Yemen, Salah El Hajj Hassan.

“Unfortunately, trends indicate that recurrent hazards and shocks will continue to threaten Yemen. But, if we support people to build up their resilience, they will be better positioned to cope with these adversities, thus averting the threat of hunger and humanitarian crises,” he added.

The availability of nutrition information and food security will allow an appropriate and efficient response by the International Community to the crisis and prevent further deterioration. The EU is confident that this renewed collaboration with FAO will benefit the Yemeni population at a large scale.

FAO support will be provided to different government institutions including the Governorate Focal Units, Food Security Technical Secretariat of the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, Yemen’s lead agency for collecting and channeling food security information to other government institutions, development partners, donors and communities.

The support will include training on food security, livelihood and nutrition, market information, Geographic Information System and remote sensing. This will enable the review of agriculture and food security sector policies and strategies, database management and statistical analysis, Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, Early Warning data collection.

These efforts will build on the EU-FAO’s successful experience in strengthening the capacity of local food security data-collection units in 13 governorates during the 2013-2018 period. The new EU funding will now allow extending the support to the nine remaining governorates, ensuring the establishment of the Governorate Focal Units and Food Security Information System across all of Yemen.

The FAO-EU agreement for this next phase of work was formally finalized and signed on 31 January 2019.

Original source: FAO
Published on 04 February 2019