Emergency WASH response for IDPs in Governorates of Hajjah and Amran - Yemen The ongoing conflict in Yemen has changed the country’s landscape of human development.  Already the seventh most water-scarce country in the world an estimated 19.3 million People in Yemen require assistance to ensure access to safe drinking water of whom 9.8 million are in need as a direct result of the current conflict. Commercial water trucks the main source of water for many – are reportedly between three and four times more expensive and in some cases unable to enter affected areas due to insecurity, or interference by parties to the conflict.

The last Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) has rated  Hajjah and Amram governorates at high in terms of severity of needs in WASH such as 5. The Task Force on Population Movement (TFPM), led by UNHCR and IOM and in collaboration with several operational partners, in its sixth report has determined that there were 2,509,068 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Yemen while Hajjah and Amran has significant caseload. These figures point to an increase of nine per cent since 15 October 2015, and an eight fold increase since March 2015. While displacement has decreased in the southern governorates, where there have been large scale returns in recent months, it has increased significantly in the northern governorates, consistent with the patterns of conflict.

In the chronically water scarce Amran Governorate, the population is significantly dependent upon water trucking for drinking and domestic utility.  The water distribution network in Khamer has not been operational since 2006. In the past 10 years, the population in Khamer town, about 29,985 households collected water for domestic use from private boreholes and bought their drinking water from private water trucks. Additional stress on the water sources have been noticed because of large number o IDPs in the same areas. Local Water authority has been in search of solutions to implement something more sustainable for facilitation of local community and IDPs. To date, Local Water Authority has identified a borehole called As-Salam borehole (350m away – upstream from  the hospital compound) in Khamer City for the inner part as well as Al-Naif  borehole for Section II (distance from the city is about 9 km with elevation difference about 500-600m) and technical assessments and cost estimates have been prepared.  

On the other hand, the conflict in Haradh, Sa’ada and border areas with KSA has resulted in mass displacement of IDPs into the Hajjah area, and specifically to Abs district. Displaced families are in urgent need to clean water.  Since February 2016, extensive mapping carried out of available water sources in its operating area in order to support more sustainable sources of water provision as well as exit strategy from water trucking. More than 18,000 individual benefited which is an expensive operation considering the average cost of treated water in Abs is about 2,000 YER/m3 or about 9.3 USD/m3. The developed exit strategy from water trucking in Bani Hassan will use a sustainable approach that had undertaken to exit from water trucking in Abs, Hairan, Harad, and Alzuhra.