Learning from local communities and respecting local social norms

Three years of ongoing conflict and economic decline in Yemen have exhausted the population’s adaptation mechanisms, destroyed infrastructure and seriously disrupted the country’s economy. The number of districts facing potential risk of famine has significantly increased as the situation rapidly deteriorates.

The complexity of the situation is not only related to malnutrition and food insecurity, but also to other underlying causal factors aggregated by the conflict. The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) situation has increasingly worsened, the total number of people in need of WASH assistance has reached 16 million and now includes 11.6 million in acute need. The lack of sufficient clean water, latrines and solid waste disposal, further aggravated by the arid and humid climate and flood risk, multiplies the risk of WASH-related disease outbreaks such as cholera, acute diarrhoea, malaria and dengue, especially for Internally Displaced Persons and host communities. 50 per cent of undernutrition in Yemen is associated with infections caused by poor WASH, while cholera outbreaks is deemed to have been vastly induced by contaminated water resources.

One of the three governorates targeted by Action Against Hunger is A Hudaydah Governorate which has the largest share of the country’s cholera cases with 158,958 suspected cases, 14.6 per cent of the country’s total caseload. Here we are implementing a multi-sectoral humanitarian response including Nutrition, Health, WASH, Food Security and Livelihoods. Our WASH sector interventions continue to build the capacity of the local communities and WASH public counterpart agencies. Among its different learning and accountability measures, Action Against Hunger WASH collects lessons learned during the delivery of our various WASH interventions to advise, and further improve, the delivery of WASH in future projects.

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