Improving food security and dietary diversity

“After the forcible displacement, we were surviving on one meal a day,” said Zainab, a 37-year-old mother of five children, living in an IDP’s camp in As-Swadyia district of Al-Bayda governorate. In 2017, thousands of families including Zainab’s were coerced to leave their homes in search of safety and security as the war greatly escalated in all areas of Sa’ada governorate. Zainab and her children then displaced to Al-Ghathamah camp to be settled in an unfurnished tent, worrying about food, medications, household’s items, and shelter repairs.

Before fleeing her home, Zainab used to work as a farmer to earn daily wages, enabling her to afford the varying needs of the family and to put food on the table. However, she found herself destitute the moment she displaced to the IDP’s camp, with no alternative source of income to buy food and medication for her children. Nonetheless, this mother never gave up fighting for her children. She wakes up every day to collect plastic bottles to be sold even for inadequate amount of money beside the support of humanitarian actors in the area.

Measuring the vulnerability levels, RDP, in partnership with Yemen Humanitarian fund (YHF), are working together to reduce the suffering of food security crisis among areas where the most affected IDPs and host communities are settling. Zainab’s family is one of 180 other HHs benefited in Al-Ghathamah camp from the unconditional cash transfer assistance within the life-saving response project in food security for community households and IDP’s collective sites. The project has contributed greatly to increasing access to daily sustenance, targeting 500 HHs of 3,487 individuals disaggregated as (652 men, 737 women, 1,095 boys and 1,093 girls) of IDPs and most vulnerable marginalized HHs for six consecutive rounds in As-Swadyia district of AL-Bayda governorate.

Through RDP’s unconditional cash transfer intervention, affected people have been able to identify their own priorities and express a wide range of spend, from food and households items, to spend on livelihoods and shelter repairs. Receiving cash has enabled IDPs to meet their varying needs in a respected and dignified manner.