March 11, 2020
Francesco Di Bona - MA in Development Economics and International Studies, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
In crisis and conflict contexts, food assistance is used as a main form of humanitarian aid. Food insecurity can be tackled directly through food basket transfers or school feeding programmes, or indirectly through cash or voucher transfers, with the latter that can be redeemed in supermarkets. Lately, cash transfers have been on the rise as a humanitarian food aid measure. The World Food Programme (WFP) has been assisting food insecure countries in crisis settings. I decided to write this piece to analyse the goodness of cash transfer programmes in Yemen. The Arab country is currently suffering an extremely harsh humanitarian crisis, thus it is important to thoroughly examine the situation, shading light on the Yemeni condition and giving out helpful and useful policy advice. Nevertheless, before examining the Yemeni case, a brief review of two other WFP projects in Mali and Uganda will help in collecting some background information on humanitarian food aid programmes.
Mali witnessed political unrest and conflict from 2012 to 2014. The WFP assisted the population in the province of Mopti through food transfers, school feeding, supplementary feeding and blanket supplementary feeding. Food disbursement increased total expenditures, while school feeding in combination with other forms of assistance increased food expenditures. Furthermore, receiving school feeding assistance had a positive impact on micronutrient intake such as calories, protein, iron and vitamin A. Overall, the food assistance provided by the WFP improved food security in the targeted province.
In Uganda, specifically in a post-conflict context, transfers were given to households that had at least one child enrolled in preschool. Cash transfers had a larger significant positive effect on food security compared to their food counterparts. Furthermore, a substantial part of the cash transfer was also used for non-food consumption. Cash transfers resulted to be the preferred modality among beneficiaries.
Due to the ongoing conflict, Yemen is currently witnessing a substantially severe food crisis. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), notwithstanding an important effort in humanitarian assistance, 53% of the Yemeni population is facing severe food insecurity. This data seems even more alarming in absolute values, accounting to 15.9 million people who are considered food insecure. The humanitarian assistance provided by development agencies has surely helped in challenging the crisis, nevertheless, looking at the stunning data, is food assistance alone, enough to fully tackle food insecurity in Yemen?
Food Insecurity in Yemen; January 2019
Source: IPC Global Support Unit January 2019
As the national turmoil and violence started in 2011, the WFP assisted the already severely food insecure Yemeni population (14 governorates) with food assistance programmes in the form of 49 US Dollars cash and food transfers. Cash transfers resulted to positively impact dietary diversity relative to food transfers. Additionally, the more diverse diet did not translate to a higher caloric intake, which was registered for food transfers beneficiaries. Cash transfers beneficiaries also increased their food expenditure, while concerning non-food consumption, specifically khat expenditure, both types of targeted population did not seem spending their transfer on the narcotic leaf. Interesting is the analysis of Benjamin Schwab (2019) on the productive usage of cash and food transfers in Yemen. Cash transfers, as suggested by the theory, had a positive impact on reducing liquidity constraints and resulted in productive investments such as livestock expenditure and changes in the irrigation systems, while the food transfer acted as a sort of insurance, thus incentivising Yemeni farmers in investing in higher-return crops as well as in non-food production. The transaction costs for cash transfers are lower than for food transfers and cash disbursements tend to be the preferred modality by the beneficiaries allowing them more freedom of usage.
Humanitarian food assistance in Yemen is certainly helping in controlling food insecurity in the country, however, as the above-mentioned data shows, greater and more diverse efforts are needed to fully tackle the crisis. Evidence shows that conflict setting hinders a sound delivery of food assistance in the areas affected by violence, thus it is of critical importance to stop the ongoing conflict in order to fully address food insecurity. Furthermore, food aid must be accompanied with identification, prevention and treatment measures of malnutrition. This can be done by implementing outreach and education activities. Finally, enhancement of productive economic activities is also important to improve food security. Humanitarian food assistance should be combined with services allowing the affected population to invest productively. Access to financial tools can be seen as a modality to intervene in such sense.
