A Lack of Coordination and Transparency in Yemen?
Visit to the UNHCR and What I Hope to Learn
Francesca McKay
Visiting the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will be a fantastic opportunity to engage with an organisation which is at the forefront of many of the issues I have an interest in. Through this blog, I am going to share why I am particularly enthusiastic to visit the UNHCR on the Geneva trip, and how I plan to make the most out of my time there. First, I will give some background about the organisation and its work, before looking at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the role of the UNHCR, sharing some general questions I have about their operations on the ground. Then I will explain what I hope to learn from the visit in terms of the working environment and communications. Finally, I will lay out my plan for how I am going to make the most out of the trip in order to plan my next career steps.
Some Background Information about the UNHCR
Created in 1950, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helps with refugee crises across the globe. Having expanded its scope to include internally displaced people and stateless people, it seeks to ensure everyone has the right to find safe refuge. The current High Commissioner for Refugees is Filippo Grandi, and over 17,000 staff are employed through the many divisions which sit under the High Commissioner. One question I have found difficult to answer through my research, is how a UN office with a High Commissioner such as UNHCR differs in its structure and operations, to an office such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
The division I’d most like to learn more about within the organisation is the Field Information and Coordination Support Section (FICSS). This division is responsible for collecting and analysing data collected by UNHCR on the ground and looks to better manage operational data. In the article ‘Can we look into the future? Using demographic models to project displaced populations’ Alubrez-Gutierrez writes about FICSS’s work to gather and analyse data on displaced populations in order to model future scenarios which inform their operational planning. I am keen to find out about other tools that UNHCR have developed to help understand refugee populations and specifically, how they gather their data.
The Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen
Violent conflict has engulfed Yemen since 2014 when Houthi rebels took over the capital city of Sana’a. Since then, the country has become a battleground for numerous state and non-state actors including Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis and the internationally recognised Hadi government, and terrorist organisations such as Al-Quaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Yemen and its population are also suffering the consequences of climate change as flooding and devastating cyclones have become more frequent, contributing to an outbreak of cholera affecting more than 1 million people. UN estimates show over 131,000 deaths from indirect causes such as food insecurity, five million at risk of famine and four million people who have been displaced. Among these statistics are Yemen’s women and children, who suffer most as a result of gender inequalities.
UNHCR in Yemen
UNHCR is the Protection Cluster lead agency in Yemen. It is pushing for greater respect of International Humanitarian Law and the protection it affords to civilians, as well as delivering relief programmes in Yemen.
In 2021, UNHCR’s objectives in Yemen were grouped according to population group:
Internally Displaced People
- Strengthening services for persons with specific needs (eg. women and girls, at-risk children, persons with serious medical conditions and chronic illnesses)
- Ensuring the population has sufficient basic and domestic items
- Establishing, improving and maintaining shelter and infrastructures
- Strengthening and expanding community mobilization
- Promoting peaceful co-existence with local communities
- Refining and improving camp management and coordination
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
- Improving self-reliance and livelihoods
- Strengthening protection of children
- Reducing risk of sexual and gender-based violence and improving the quality of response to SGBV
- Improving quality of registration and profiling
- Improving access to reproductive health and HIV services
UNHCR supports people who are internally displaced (IDPs) in Yemen, providing them with the basics needed to survive. Over 7,000 individuals have already been forcibly displaced in Yemen since the beginning of 2022 and the majority of UNHCR’s operations in Yemen are directed at IDPs (96%).
UNHCR’s Work On Gender Inequality in Yemen
Yemen already ranks among the lowest scoring countries for gender equality and cultural gender norms leave women and girls especially vulnerable to violence and food insecurity. Pregnant and breastfeeding women are more prone to malnutrition and where food is scarce, women are usually the last to eat. In addition, girls are first to drop out of school and the current crisis in Yemen has seen an increase in child marriage with 1 in 5 displaced girls aged 10-19 being married off. Detention and enforced disappearance of male relatives leaves women and children without male “protection”, a key feature of Yemen’s cultural gender norms. This puts them even more at risk of physical and sexual violence at the hands of men in their communities, as well as from parties to the conflict using rape as a weapon of war.
I hope that during our visit to UNHCR, there will be time for a discussion about if and how UNHCR has adapted its operations and policies to cover the issue of gender inequality, not only in Yemen but throughout its work. Do they gather data on gender inequality and if so, how does this inform their planning? What particular challenges does gender inequality create for UNHCR when delivering its programmes?
The Rapid Needs and Vulnerability Assessment update shows that 73% of the people assessed in 2021 were men, compared to only 27% female. Needs assessments are carried out by partner agencies as well as UNHCR staff and I am interested in how UNHCR selects and builds relationships with such partners and whether or not the gap between males and females assessed might be because of constraints face by organisations on the ground. I would like to know whether this gap reflects the make-up of populations in areas of displacement and is therefore expected by UNHCR, or whether they seek to close this gap.
In their report from January 2022, UNHCR report to have carried out a number of activities in relation to tackling gender-based violence, however the participation numbers seems small in relation to the number of people supported overall. I am keen to know if UNHCR has difficulty in increasing participation numbers in such activities and if so, what it is doing to encourage greater participation.
Challenges Faced by UNHCR in Yemen
As well as a lack of adequate funding, humanitarian organisations face constraints in the form of increased fighting, a fuel crisis, aid interference and obstruction, and security threats to staff. Aid is regularly stolen by armed factions, sometimes before even having left the port. When it is not stolen, agencies face pressure by local authorities to distribute aid according to their own interests, rather than according to need.
Humanitarian organisations must receive approval from local authorities in order to deliver programmes and the approval process is often lengthy, diverting resources away from aid delivery to deal with bureaucracy and negotiations.
In addition, ships carrying fuel are blocked from entering Yemen’s ports, creating a fuel crisis which impedes agencies’ ability to transport aid and support hospitals. Escalating conflict and attacks on aid workers cause additional obstacles to delivering relief programmes, while the use of land mines in Yemen makes vulnerable communities difficult to reach.
Humanitarian organisations such as the UNHCR have faced criticism for their role in exacerbating the situation in Yemen through a lack of coordination and transparency. Individual organisations left to fight their own corner have been unable to push back against aid interference, missing opportunities to show collective resistance. This has emboldened those responsible for coercing agencies seeking access to communities in need, into supporting those responsible for prolonging the conflict. Humanitarian organisations have also been accused of a lack of strategic understanding of aid obstruction and a lack of transparency in its investigations into aid diversion.
While the UNHCR states that it has assisted over 1 million people in 2021, an independent think tank based in Yemen has described the failure of international organisations to reach Yemenis in need as the largest international failure to respond to a humanitarian crisis. It calls for greater coordination between aid agencies and for relief operations to be “reassessed and held accountable”. However, with some humanitarian organisations operating their largest ever relief programmes in Yemen, they cannot be accused of complacency, and the outcomes of their operations must be seen in the context of an increasingly difficult environment within which relief programmes operate.
If the opportunity arises to ask such questions, I would like to find out about the UNHCR’s stance on the lack of cooperation and transparency. Is it felt, within the organisation, that they have played a role in exacerbating the already grave humanitarian situation, and if so what steps are they taking to improve things?
What is a typical career route into the UNHCR?
During the visits, not only with the UNHCR but with other UN agencies, I hope to gain some insight into the types of people that work for such organisations and the path they took. In particular I would like to know whether, in general, they are recruited because of very specialised knowledge on a particular issue or because of a broad range of experiences. Which kinds of experiences do such organisations find most valuable? Where do they find the biggest gaps in their recruitment? I’ll use what I learn from this to inform how I make my choices on assignment topics and eventually on my dissertation. It will also help me to plan what I should focus on in terms of developing my CV. By the end of the trip, I would like to have a better understanding of how experiences in my current job might be relevant if making job applications to organisations such as the UNHCR.
What is it like to work at UNHCR?
I imagine the people who work at UNHCR are very passionate about what they do and that the working environment is intense and fast-paced. I will be interested to see if this is reflected in the people we talk to during the visit. As well as dedicated, passionate people, I hope we will speak to people who are open to critical questions and not blind to the shortcomings of international organisations.
Like most organisations, UNHCR will have been effected by the Covid-19 pandemic and I am curious to find out how they have adapted. Perhaps new ways of working have been introduced which UNHCR plan to keep in place post-Covid. I would like to know if and how changes brought about by Covid-19 have impacted on the UNHCR’s recruitment practices.
Making the most out of the visit
Preparation will be key to making sure I get the most out of our visit to the UNHCR. I will focus my reading on some of the bigger issues that the UNHCR is currently working on and if possible, find out about the role of the person who will be hosting us. This will allow me to think about the questions we may get to ask so that the answers we receive will be as useful as possible.
In summary, I expect that our visit to the UNHCR will leave me with a better understanding of the organisation and the issues it is currently working on. I hope to gain some insight into typical career paths both within the UNHCR, and of the people who work there. This will inform my choices as I complete the ICC course and allow me to plan for my next career steps.