Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

WFP, through its Interim Country Strategic Plan (ICSP), is targeting over 13 million of the most severely food insecure women, men, girls and boys with life-saving food and nutrition assistance in all 22 governorates of Yemen.

Funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism will be used for the delivery of WFP's nutrition assistance programmes under Strategic Outcome 2 of the ICSP: People at risk of malnutrition across Yemen, especially pregnant and lactating women and girls and children under 5 years old, have reduced levels of malnutrition.

Expected results

Austria’s contribution will be used to procure commodities for Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programmes (TSFP), which treat acute and chronic malnutrition in children under the age of five years. These programmes provide beneficiaries with Ready-to-use Supplementary Food (RUSF), also defined as a lipid-based nutrient supplement large quantity (LNS-LQ), which provides 510 kcal per day for an average of 90 days. Austria’s contribution will enable WFP to procure around 223 metric tons of specialised nutrition feeding products. This will help to reduce and rehabilitate children’s cases of moderate acute malnutrition (MAM).

Target group / Beneficiaries

Austria's contribution will fund TSFP nutrition activities for around 74,500 children under the age of five over a period of one month. The exact number of children to be assisted, and the timeframe for this assistance, will be determined by an assessment of current needs - shortly before funds are confirmed and commodities procured arrive in Yemen.

Partners: WFP holds cooperating partnerships with around 20 international and national NGOs, as well as governorate health offices, to deliver nutrition interventions. As an active member of the Nutrition Cluster, WFP cooperates closely with the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MoPHP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to offer acute malnutrition treatment and prevention services and revitalize national capacity to deliver these services and to ensure the synergy and complementarity of interventions.

Countrywide coverage: WFP’s nutrition activities in Yemen are implemented across all governorates.

Activities

WFP will use the Austrian contribution to deliver nutrition assistance programmes, specifically Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programmes (TSFP). TSFP assistance aims to rehabilitate individuals with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and reduce mortality risk in children under five years of age with MAM, by providing specialised nutrition products on a regular basis over a treatment period of three months.

Beneficiaries of targeted supplementary feeding are screened in local centers, through community health volunteers and screening campaigns organized by the Ministry of Health, using mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) and weight-for-height measurements. Beneficiaries are discharged after an average stay of three months in the programme, once they have reached an acceptable MUAC.

This activity will be implemented in line with national protocols and in close collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MoPHP) and nutrition cluster partners concerned with severe acute malnutrition, including UNICEF and the WHO.

Context

Yemen remains one of the world’s most concerning humanitarian crisis. Protracted conflict and the destruction of infrastructure and basic public services, coupled with economic decline and pre-existing structural issues such as widespread poverty, has exposed large segments of the Yemeni population to unprecedented levels of food insecurity, malnutrition and disease.

The situation is at a critical point. 16.2 million people (54 percent of the population) now face severe acute food insecurity (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3 and above). Of which, around 11 million people are in Crisis (IPC phase 3), 5 million people in Emergency phase (IPC phase 4) and around 47,000 people in Catastrophe (IPC phase 5), the first return of IPC 5 conditions in Yemen in the last two years. Compared to 2018, the number of districts in IPC Phase 4 conditions has more than tripled, from 49 to 154, out of 333 in Yemen.

Malnutrition rates among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world. The IPC Acute Malnutrition Analysis published in February 2021 showed record levels of acute malnutrition in Yemen, with over 2.25 million cases of children aged 0 to 59 months. Around 360,000 of these children are estimated to be at risk of dying without treatment. More than a million cases of pregnant and lactating women are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in the course of 2021 in Yemen. This is a 16 percent increase from 2020 and is among the highest levels recorded in Yemen since the conflict started. Out of the 35 zones included in the IPC Acute Malnutrition (IPC AMN) analysis, 32 contain global acute malnutrition rates above 10 percent, signalling a nutrition emergency, with rates up to 31 percent in Hodeidah Highlands and Lowlands.