A Literature Review on Social Assistance and Capacity in Yemen
Authors: Carter Becky , Harvey Paul 
Published: October 2023

Yemen is experiencing one of the worst crises in the world in terms of levels of suffering and humanitarian need. Intense civil war since 2014 has devastated the national economy, and approximately two-thirds of the population (21.6 million people) were assessed as being in need of humanitarian assistance and protection services in 2023 (OCHA 2023a). In response to such huge levels of need, a substantial humanitarian aid operation has been ongoing for the past eight years. The social assistance landscape in Yemen is a complex mix of humanitarian aid and the legacies of social protection systems, with local institutions still playing a role in the delivery of assistance. This paper reviews the literature, looking at the following issues: how best to balance humanitarian and social protection approaches; how to balance meeting acute immediate needs and support for longer-term systems in an ongoing conflict; and how to maintain support in the face of donor fatigue, and a complex and dynamic political landscape in Yemen. In a context where aid actors are committed to localisation, and in order to strengthen the nexus between development, humanitarian and peace-building approaches, it is vital to understand how local capacities have been affected by conflict and how the international aid effort is trying to engage with national and local actors. However, efforts to strengthen local capacities also need to take into account the divided governance in Yemen, ongoing conflict, and tensions between the main donor governments’ funding of assistance and the de facto authorities in the north of Yemen. This paper provides an empirical building block that will help to inform efforts to engage with local capacities by comprehensively mapping the complex mix of local and national actors involved in the management, delivery and regulation of social assistance. This review summarises the key literature and evidence on the capacities of national and international actors involved in providing social assistance in Yemen. It has been undertaken to inform a Yemen study on social assistance capacities and systems, part of the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme.[1] The primary audience is donors providing social assistance in Yemen, to help their decision-making on how to support local actors’ capacities for social assistance. Social assistance refers to the non-contributory transfers (provided as food, cash or vouchers) to poor and vulnerable households and individuals. Today in Yemen these transfers support millions of people, funded by humanitarian and development aid, and implemented by international aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with national quasi-governmental bodies and national and local NGOs. Other local stakeholders (national and local governance authorities in the north and south of the country, and community members and beneficiaries) are also involved. This Yemen study feeds into broader BASIC Research work on the resilience of social protection systems in crises. We draw on the inception review by Slater, Haruna and Baur (2022) to frame our understanding of capacity along three interlinked dimensions: institutional, organisational and individual capacities. We found a small published literature on capacities for social assistance in Yemen (mainly donor and aid agency strategic and programme documents and some independent analysis of aid effectiveness). In this report, we summarise the political economy of international support in Yemen (Section 2). We map the social assistance landscape (Section 3), as well as the capacities of key national actors (Section 4) and international actors (Section 5 and Annexe). Section 5 sets out some preliminary conclusions.