The Impact of Humanitarian Response Plans on Limiting the Deterioration of Living Indicators in Yemen (2015–2025)

العربية : Read this article in

Abstract

This study examines the impact and effectiveness of humanitarian response plans in Yemen during the period 2015–2025 in mitigating the deterioration of living indicators. The analysis draws on data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and other international sources. The findings indicate that humanitarian response functioned as a life-support system, preventing total collapse but reinforcing chronic dependency due to the focus on the survival threshold, persistent political constraints, and the limited effectiveness of resilience strategies in the absence of political will. The study argues that humanitarian strategies should be reoriented toward reducing long-term dependency by linking aid to structural reforms that stabilize the economy and restore basic services. It also highlights the need to measure the “cost of constraints” on humanitarian access to strengthen international advocacy and shift the response from temporary relief toward addressing the root causes of Yemen’s protracted crisis.

Introduction
Since the coup of 21 September 2014, Yemen has been witnessing a complex and worsening humanitarian crisis resulting from the overlap of armed conflict with economic collapse and the deterioration of basic services. These conditions have led to worsening food insecurity, deterioration of livelihoods, and increased protection risks, especially among vulnerable groups. In this context, the international community, represented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and its partners, prepared a series of Humanitarian Response Plans (HRPs) to guide interventions. The response plans (2015–2016) focused on emergency response to life-saving needs. With the continuation of the crisis, these plans gradually evolved (2017–2020) to adopt more comprehensive approaches in the context of a protracted crisis, with increasing focus on prioritization based on severity of need, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and declining funding. The response plans affirm that humanitarian action, despite its importance, cannot be a permanent solution to the crisis, stressing the need for progress toward peace and economic recovery to build community resilience. These plans represent a critical analytical framework for understanding the evolution of humanitarian approaches and evaluating their impact and limits in Yemen.

Problem Statement

This study proceeds from a central problem: prevailing evaluations of humanitarian response plans in Yemen have largely been confined to two contradictory perspectives—praising their ability to save lives and offering moral criticism for their failure to improve living conditions. However, both perspectives, in their common form, overlook the crucial question of “how and why.”

The research problem lies in the gap between the volume of humanitarian resources mobilized—approximately $20 billion over a decade—and the persistence of living indicators at catastrophic levels. This study argues that this gap cannot be explained solely by funding shortages or weak implementation. Rather, it requires an explanatory analysis that examines the design of interventions, the mechanisms they activate, and the political and economic contexts within which they operate.

Accordingly, this paper seeks to answer the following questions:

1. To what extent have humanitarian response plans contributed to mitigating the deterioration of living indicators in Yemen during the period 2015–2025?
2. What are the main determinants and factors that have prevented these plans from achieving their maximum effectiveness in improving living conditions?
3. What pathways can redirect response strategies in ways that reduce dependency on aid and enhance sustainable impact?

Methodology:
This paper adopts a descriptive analytical approach of an integrative nature, based on combining critical documentary analysis of the Humanitarian Response Plans (HRPs) issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs during the period (2015–2025), with the researcher’s perspective as a field-based analytical tool in itself, grounded in cumulative experience extending over eighteen years in the Yemeni humanitarian context. This use is not limited to narrative or experiential recall, but is embodied in the method of participant observation, through direct engagement in sector cluster meetings, contribution to needs analysis sessions and priority-setting, and regular professional interaction with experts from UN agencies and international organizations. This approach provides a structural understanding of the dynamics of humanitarian planning, mechanisms of decision-making, patterns of resource distribution, and the power relations embedded within the response system.

Based on this analytical foundation, the study is framed within the methodology of Realist Evaluation developed by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley, described as an interpretive approach that goes beyond linear measurement of results to analyze the interactive relationship between context, mechanisms, and outcomes. This methodology starts from a central assumption that humanitarian interventions are not neutral technical tools, but rather socio-political programs whose effectiveness is shaped by the mechanisms they activate within specific contexts marked by conflict, institutional fragmentation, and uneven balances of power. Thus, the central analytical question becomes: what works? for whom? and under what structural and political conditions? This is a question more consistent with the nature of the Yemeni crisis as a protracted, multi-level crisis in which humanitarian considerations intersect with the determinants of the political economy of conflict. The combination of deep documentary analysis and field experience theoretically framed within realist evaluation gives the study an explanatory capacity that goes beyond description, enabling it to deconstruct the logic of the response plans themselves and reveal their structural limits and transformative potential.

Objectives of the Response Plans
Humanitarian response plans focused on several main objectives, the most important of which were:

• Saving lives and protecting vulnerable groups.
• Restoring human dignity.
• Supporting basic livelihoods.

Concept of Response Plans
Humanitarian Response Plans (HRPs) are defined as comprehensive strategic documents aimed at providing a unified framework for identifying the most urgent humanitarian needs and coordinating responses to them. HRPs are also defined within the framework of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) as the operational tool that translates humanitarian needs analysis into strategic objectives and coordinated sectoral plans.

Concept of Living Indicators
In the context of this study, living indicators are defined as dynamic measures that reflect individuals’ quality of life and their ability to meet basic needs in a context of conflict. They represent the areas most affected by humanitarian interventions. These indicators are reflected in five main dimensions: food security, represented by levels of availability and access; income, expressed through purchasing power and poverty rates; health, which reflects the efficiency of services and mortality rates; education, in terms of access opportunities and reducing dropout; and livelihoods, linked to income-generating activities and productive resources. Together, these dimensions constitute the primary benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of humanitarian response plans in achieving a transition from emergency relief to livelihood stability. Access to basic services is used as a measure for assessing living standards and quality of life.

Evolution of Humanitarian Response Plans in Yemen (2015–2025)
Humanitarian response plans in Yemen witnessed a gradual shift from life-saving emergency response in the early years of the conflict to a model for managing a chronic humanitarian crisis. This shift was characterized by narrowing the scope of interventions, setting strict priorities, and focusing on the minimum life-saving activities, while revealing a growing gap between escalating needs and available resources. The following table illustrates the key features of these plans:

Table (1): Planned and Reached Population, and Planned and Received Funding During the Humanitarian Response Plan Period

Year	People in Need (million)	People Targeted (million)	People Reached (million)	Required Response Funding (billion USD)	Received Response Funding (billion USD)
2015	21.1	11.7	8.8	1.60	0.89
2016	21.2	13.6	10.6	1.63	1.03
2017	18.8	12.0	10.2	2.34	1.76
2018	22.2	13.1	13.5	3.11	2.51
2019	24.1	21.4	13.7	4.2	3.6
2020	24.1	21.4	10.0	3.4	2.0
2021	20.7	16.0	11.6	3.9	2.4
2022	23.4	17.9	10.7	4.3	2.2
2023	21.6	17.3	8.7	4.3	1.6
2024	18.2	11.2	8.0	2.7	1.4
2025	19.5	10.5	5.0	2.5	0.7
Total	–	–	–	33.98	20.09

Source: Prepared by the researcher based on the Humanitarian Response Plans issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

 

An extended analysis of humanitarian response plans in Yemen (2015–2025) reflects a mixture of tactical successes and strategic failures. While these plans succeeded at the level of “vital maintenance” by preventing the comprehensive collapse of food and health security and containing epidemics, they showed limited impact on long-term living indicators and on achieving sustainability, which entrenched a state of structural dependency. This disparity is attributed to the focus of programs on survival rather than development, political and security constraints, fragmented authorities, and the persistent gap between humanitarian and development agendas.

The statistical data in Table (1) confirms this structural imbalance, revealing a sharp gap between rising needs and available resources. Out of a total of $33.98 billion required over the decade, only $20.09 billion was received. The sharp decline in the funding curve—from its peak in 2019 ($3.6 billion) to its lowest level in 2025 ($0.7 billion)—despite needs remaining at critical levels exceeding 19 million people, demonstrates the widening “response gap” and the inability of interventions to move beyond their immediate relief role. This has turned aid into merely a tool for postponing total collapse without addressing its structural roots.

Theoretical Frameworks Explaining the Impact of Humanitarian Interventions

1. Protracted Crisis Management Theory
   This theory focuses on understanding how humanitarian actors deal with crises that evolve into chronic situations, where the primary objective becomes managing the crisis and limiting its deterioration rather than resolving it. In the Yemeni context, this theory explains the gradual shift in the objectives of response plans from improving living conditions to preventing the complete collapse of basic life indicators and ensuring that the population remains at the minimum subsistence level. It also explains that reducing the number of beneficiaries and tightening targeting criteria represents an application of a scarcity management strategy in the absence of a political solution, which reinforces dependence on aid and turns the response into part of managing the status quo rather than changing it.
2. Minimum Living Standards / Survival Threshold Theory
   This theory suggests that humanitarian response in high-risk environments should ensure that individuals remain above the biological and social survival threshold without aiming for a comprehensive improvement in welfare levels. In Yemen, this theory explains the design of response plans that focused almost exclusively on acute and immediate crisis indicators such as malnutrition and mortality rates, with the aim of preventing mass deaths. This design explains why the stability or deterioration of general living indicators was not considered a failure of the response, but rather a logical outcome of a design that did not aim to address the root causes of livelihood deterioration, instead functioning as a “last safety net.”
3. Humanitarian Gap Theory
   This theory assumes a permanent structural imbalance between the growing scale of humanitarian needs and the financial and political resources available for response. In Yemen, this theory represents a central framework for understanding the direct reasons behind the limited impact of response plans. It explains that recurring funding gaps—sometimes reaching 40–50% of needs—force a reduction in the scope of interventions and a reprioritization in favor of life-saving sectors at the expense of long-term stability. It also highlights that the problem lies not in diagnosing the crisis but in treating it, as ambitious plans often remain unimplemented due to lack of resources, thereby contributing to the perpetuation of the crisis.
4. Humanitarian–Development–Peace Nexus Theory
   This theory is based on integrating emergency humanitarian action with sustainable development and peacebuilding in order to ensure a lasting impact in complex crises. In Yemen, the application of this theory, particularly since 2022, represents a conscious attempt to move beyond the logic of “survival management” toward “resilience building.” However, its implementation has faced major challenges due to the absence of peace and the lack of flexible multi-year funding, which has made its impact partial and unable to produce structural transformation. The theory calls for a fundamental change in how actors operate, linking interventions and expanding partnerships in order to reduce dependence on aid.
5. Resilience Theory
   This theory focuses on the ability of individuals and communities to absorb shocks, adapt to them, and maintain basic livelihood functions in unstable environments. In Yemen, the theory explains the inclusion of empowerment programs such as livelihood support and cash-for-work within response plans, with the aim of strengthening households’ ability to absorb shocks. However, the study shows that resilience-building programs remained a complementary objective with limited impact and did not become a substitute for emergency humanitarian response, due to the continued severe political and economic shocks that exceed communities’ capacity to absorb and adapt.

The Politics of Humanitarian Planning

The study finds that humanitarian response plans are not merely purely technical documents, but rather the product of a complex political negotiation process among international donors, United Nations agencies (OCHA), major international organizations, the government, and the Houthis. This reality means that the declared objectives and requested budgets may result from political adjustments aimed at convincing donors and demonstrating the scale of the catastrophe, without necessarily reflecting the realistic implementation capacity on the ground. Consequently, the gap between objectives and results is not merely a failure of implementation, but also an inherent gap in the design of the plans themselves, which oscillate between humanitarian ambition and political reality.

Key Results of the Response Plans (2015–2025)

After analyzing the trajectory of the humanitarian response over more than a full decade, several core findings can be derived. Table (2) reveals a striking paradox: despite the enormous financial and human resources mobilized, the overall living indicators of the population either remained fixed at catastrophic levels or continued to deteriorate. This numerical reality represents the main starting point for understanding the limits of the effectiveness of the humanitarian response and forms the background against which the following qualitative results can be interpreted.

Table (2): Development of Some Key Living Indicators in Yemen (2015–2025)

Indicator	Proposed Data Source	General Trend Observation	Approximate Value 2015	Approximate Value 2025
Percentage of population below the poverty line	World Bank, UNDP	Severe and continuous deterioration in living standards	49%	80%
Number of people in need of humanitarian assistance	OCHA Humanitarian Response Plans	Stability at catastrophic levels despite funding changes	21.1 million	19.5 million
Rate of acute malnutrition among children	UNICEF, WFP	Slight increase and stability at critical levels	16%	17.5%
Unemployment rate (especially among youth)	UNDP	Sharp increase due to the collapse of the economy and labor market	15%	35%
Yemen’s ranking in the Human Development Index	UNDP Human Development Reports	Continuous decline reflecting overall developmental collapse	168	183

Source: Prepared by the researcher based on international reports.

Analysis of the Impact of Humanitarian Response Plans on Basic Living Indicators

The analysis measures the impact of humanitarian response plans in Yemen on a set of basic living indicators, as intermediate outcomes reflecting the ability of humanitarian interventions to move from the logic of immediate rescue to improving living conditions. The analysis is based on linking quantitative data issued by international organizations with an interpretive analysis of the mechanisms activated by interventions within different contexts. It assumes that the stability of indicators or their temporary improvement does not necessarily mean sustainable effectiveness unless it is accompanied by changes in the mechanisms of production, income, and adaptive capacity. To continue the analysis, the impact on the following sectors is examined:

The Impact of Humanitarian Response on Food Security
Food security is the most widely used indicator for evaluating the effectiveness of humanitarian response in Yemen. Data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) show that Yemen remained throughout the period of implementation of the eleven response plans within critical levels of food insecurity, despite the major expansion in food assistance programs. However, realist analysis reveals that these interventions activated mechanisms to prevent food collapse, but did not activate mechanisms for long-term food stability. Repeated food distribution led to temporary improvement in caloric intake, without addressing the causes of food insecurity related to income, production, and supply chains.

The Impact of Response on Income and Livelihoods
Cash-for-work programs and cash transfers showed relative capacity to improve short-term income for beneficiary households. However, limited coverage, their temporary nature, and their dependence on external funding prevented them from becoming tools for strengthening economic independence. Most interventions in this sector lacked integration with local markets, which limited their ability to create a multiplier effect within the local economy.

The Impact of Humanitarian Response on the Health Sector
Humanitarian response contributed to maintaining the minimum level of health services, particularly in the areas of immunization, epidemic control, and primary healthcare. However, this role was compensatory in nature, as humanitarian organizations substituted for the state without building sustainable institutional capacities. This pattern, despite its necessity in the short term, contributed to entrenching the fragility of the health system in the long term.

The Impact of Response on Education and Social Protection
In the education sector, humanitarian interventions focused on education in emergencies and on supporting incentive payments for teachers, which helped sustain the educational process partially. However, school dropout rates remained high, especially among the poorest groups.

As for protection, programs focused on responding to gender-based violence and child protection, without addressing the economic and social roots of protection risks.

After reviewing the analysis of the impact of interventions, which paints a bleak picture of the overall living situation, we can now derive the analytical conclusions that explain the reasons for this gap between effort and impact:

1- Success in preventing total collapse (preventing famine and epidemics):
The plans achieved notable success in preventing acute food insecurity from turning into widespread famine during critical moments (such as in 2018 and 2021). Health interventions also contributed to containing the largest cholera outbreak in modern history, saving millions of lives.

2- Chronic funding gap:
The analysis showed that actual funding did not exceed, on average, 55% of the required needs annually. This gap led to reductions in food rations, the closure of health facilities, and the suspension of protection programs, which kept the response constantly in a state of “defense” rather than “offense” to improve indicators.

3- Entrenching dependency on aid:
Despite the efforts made, the response based on emergency relief over many years weakened local resilience mechanisms and entrenched households’ dependence on food assistance. Estimates indicate that more than 65% of households rely wholly or partially on aid to meet their basic needs.

4- Erosion of human and institutional capital:
The plans failed to halt the long-term deterioration in the education and health sectors. Despite the provision of incentives, the education system continued to suffer from the dropout of millions of children, and the health system continued to operate at half capacity, meaning that the humanitarian impact functioned as a “pain reliever” rather than a “treatment” for infrastructure.

Discussion of Results

The results show that the humanitarian response in Yemen functioned as a life-support system for the state and society, preventing the complete collapse of basic living indicators but failing to address the root causes of the crisis. This complex dynamic can be understood through an integrated analysis combining several key theories in humanitarian work.

1- From the perspective of Protracted Crisis Management Theory, organizations succeeded in institutionalizing relief work and transforming it from an emergency response into a sustainable system for managing a chronic crisis. However, this administrative success placed them in the trap of a “circular response,” where assistance is provided to the same population groups for years without enabling them to exit the cycle of need. This shift reflects the deliberate adoption of a strategy of scarcity management in the absence of a political solution, where the objective becomes preventing collapse rather than achieving recovery.

2- This orientation becomes even clearer when applying Minimum Living Standards Theory. Humanitarian response plans in Yemen were clearly designed to keep the population above the biological “survival threshold,” by focusing on critical indicators such as acute malnutrition and access to water and health services. This design, aimed at preventing total humanitarian collapse, explains why broader living indicators such as poverty and unemployment remained stable or deteriorated; they were never the primary target of the interventions.

3- Furthermore, Humanitarian Gap Theory highlights the main reason behind the limited impact. The gap was not only financial but also an “access gap” and a “political gap.” The policies of the conflict parties—primarily the Houthi group, followed by the internationally recognized government and local authorities—such as restricting movement, imposing fees, and interfering in beneficiary lists, reduced the real value of every dollar spent. This structural imbalance between enormous needs and the limited and constrained resources made the field impact far lower than theoretically expected.

4- Despite attempts since 2022 to apply the Humanitarian–Development–Peace Nexus to link relief with development projects, the absence of sustainable funding and the continuation of a state of no peace made these interventions partial and unable to produce structural transformation. Similarly, resilience-support programs based on Resilience Theory, such as cash-for-work, had limited impact because the priority of emergency survival overshadowed long-term adaptation goals. As a result, resilience became a complementary objective rather than an alternative to urgent humanitarian assistance.

Ultimately, these theories collectively reveal that the humanitarian response in Yemen was a successful crisis-management process within its limits, but it was not—and could not be—an instrument for development or peacebuilding in the context of ongoing conflict and political and economic constraints.

Points of Agreement and Difference Between Humanitarian Response Plans

1- Key Points of Agreement:

• Priority to food security:
  Food, health, and water sectors remained the main drivers of all plans, accounting for more than 70% of the budgets.
• Reliance on data:
  All plans agreed on the necessity of annual needs assessments (HNO) as the basis for building the response.
• Humanitarian principles:
  Continuous emphasis on neutrality, independence, and integrity, despite the difficulty of applying them in the field.

2- Key Points of Difference:

• Scale of targeting:
  Targeting ranged between broad inclusiveness (2018–2019) and a strong focus on the most vulnerable groups (2024–2025) due to funding shortages.
• Qualitative shift:
  Plans moved from in-kind assistance distribution in the early stages to cash assistance and the Nexus approach in later years.
• Engagement with institutions:
  Early plans tended to bypass formal institutions, while later plans—especially from 2018 onward—attempted to support the continuity of public institutions (such as providing incentives for teachers and doctors).

Emerging Trends Resulting from the Prolonged Humanitarian Crisis

• Localization of humanitarian action:  The increasing role of local organizations as essential actors and growing pressure to empower them with resources and decision-making authority.
• Digitalization and transparency:  Increased reliance on biometric systems and digital platforms in aid distribution to reduce manipulation.
• Shift toward “economic resilience”:  Growing recognition that currency stability and the central bank’s functioning represent humanitarian interventions in themselves, sometimes with greater impact than food distribution.
• Donor fatigue:  Signs of declining international attention to Yemen in favor of emerging crises (such as Ukraine and Gaza), creating the need to search for sustainable funding alternatives.

Key Challenges

Humanitarian response plans in Yemen faced deep structural, political, and security challenges that significantly affected their effectiveness.

1- Political challenges:

• Internal political division:  The control of multiple political actors weakened oversight, evaluation, and monitoring by the internationally recognized government, while local authorities imposed restrictive practices on humanitarian interventions. The Houthi group implemented stricter and more harmful measures, including imposing taxes and fees on humanitarian organizations, interfering in beneficiary lists, and controlling transport companies and banking channels.
• Bureaucratic restrictions:  Conflicting parties imposed strict controls on the entry of staff and aid, leading to delays or sometimes blocking access. OCHA reports indicate that aid delivery delays averaged 3–6 months in some areas.
• Politicization of aid:  International and regional political polarization contributed to the politicization of humanitarian assistance, affecting the neutrality and effectiveness of operations.

2- Security challenges:

• Military operations and armed conflict:  Clashes and military operations disrupted the work of relief teams and prevented aid from reaching affected areas.
• Security risks to humanitarian workers:  Approximately 45% of humanitarian workers faced arrests, killings, direct threats, suspension from work, and raids on the offices of UN agencies and international and local organizations by Houthi militias.
• Landmines:  Landmines and explosive devices caused hundreds of injuries and prevented aid from reaching remote areas.

3- Structural challenges:

• Weak local institutions:
  Local institutions suffer from weak institutional, technical, and financial capacities, affecting the quality of humanitarian program implementation.
• Fragmented infrastructure:
  The conflict has destroyed and fragmented basic infrastructure (roads, ports, hospitals, schools), hindering relief and development operations.
• Lack of good governance:
  The absence of good governance and accountability has affected the effective use of resources and the distribution of assistance.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions 

Based on the analysis of the humanitarian response in Yemen in light of the five theories, the following main conclusions can be drawn:

• Response as a tool for crisis management rather than resolution:  Humanitarian response in Yemen has shifted from an emergency intervention to a chronic mechanism for managing the crisis (Protracted Crisis Management Theory). Although it succeeded in preventing the complete collapse of society and the state, it entrenched a condition of permanent dependency, as aid became part of the status quo rather than a bridge toward recovery.
• Intervention design focuses on survival rather than well-being:  The objectives of response plans were consciously designed to ensure the minimum requirements for survival rather than improving quality of life or addressing the root causes of poverty (Minimum Living Standards Theory). This explains the contradiction between the large volume of funding and the stability or deterioration of general living indicators, as the goal was not development but preventing catastrophe.
• The political and access gap is more dangerous than the funding gap:  The analysis demonstrated that restrictions imposed by the conflict parties—primarily the Houthi group—on the movement of aid, access to beneficiaries, and interference in humanitarian work reduced the effectiveness of every dollar spent. Therefore, the political gap was a decisive factor in weakening field impact, perhaps more than the declared financial gap (Humanitarian Gap Theory).

Failure of the humanitarian–development–peace nexus in the absence of political will:  Despite adopting the discourse of the Nexus, efforts to integrate humanitarian action with development and peacebuilding remained limited in impact. In the absence of genuine political progress and flexible long-term funding, development projects remained isolated and unable to produce structural transformation, leaving the response confined to emergency relief logic (Nexus Theory).

 

• Community resilience as a secondary goal amid continuous shocks: Programs aimed at strengthening resilience were unable to achieve their objectives in building communities’ adaptive capacity, as households continue to face successive economic and political shocks that exceed their ability to absorb them. As a result, resilience became a complementary goal pursued after ensuring survival, rather than a core strategy capable of replacing emergency assistance (Resilience Theory).
• Humanitarian response as an unintended substitute for the state: The study shows that response plans, particularly since 2018, effectively replaced certain functions of the collapsed state in the sectors of food, health, and water, without being designed to perform this role. Although this substitution was necessary to prevent collapse, it contributed to prolonging the fragility of public institutions rather than rebuilding them.
• Living indicators transformed into management tools rather than improvement targets:  Living indicators (poverty, income, food security) are no longer used as goals for improvement, but as warning indicators used to regulate the level of intervention and prevent a “humanitarian explosion.” This shift has transformed humanitarian analysis from a tool of change into a tool for crisis management.
• Erosion of community trust in humanitarian actors:  The prolonged continuation of aid, coupled with the absence of tangible improvements in people’s lives, has created a trust gap between local communities and humanitarian organizations, where humanitarian action is increasingly perceived as part of “managing the crisis” rather than a path out of it.
• Neutralization of the macroeconomic dimension in humanitarian planning:  The study shows that ignoring macroeconomic issues (currency stability, salaries, monetary policy) within response plans reduced the impact of interventions, despite the fact that stabilizing these factors is among the most effective measures for improving living indicators.

Recommendations

First: Practical and Operational Recommendations

The study presents a set of practical recommendations directed at the main actors in the humanitarian response:

1. Redefining the objective of humanitarian response:
   Shift from the goal of “preventing collapse” to a dual objective: preventing collapse and reducing dependency, by incorporating mandatory exit indicators in all programs.
2. Using aid as a legitimate tool of political leverage:
   Link humanitarian funding to clear mechanisms for improving humanitarian access, and measure the “cost of restrictions” quantitatively to transform it into evidence for international advocacy.
3. Integrating macroeconomics as a parallel humanitarian track:
   Consider supporting currency stability, salary payments, and the central bank as high-impact humanitarian interventions rather than postponed development issues.
4. Restructuring the resilience approach:
   Transform resilience programs from marginal interventions into a multi-year core track, linked to local markets rather than limited to short-term cash-for-work programs.
5. Deepening localization of decision-making, not only implementation:
   Transfer part of the planning authority and priority-setting to local actors, rather than limiting localization to implementation, in order to enhance social legitimacy and reduce operational costs.
6. Separating humanitarian analysis from funding considerations:
   Strengthen the independence of Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) assessments from the logic of “what can be funded,” ensuring that figures are not politicized or minimized for financial reasons.

Second: Recommendations for Key Stakeholders

1. For International Donors and the United Nations

• Shift from crisis management to pressure for resolution:
  Humanitarian assistance should be used as a diplomatic and political leverage tool to remove restrictions on humanitarian operations, linking future funding to tangible progress in facilitating access and protecting humanitarian workers.
• Adopt access-conditioned funding:
  Design funding mechanisms that directly link the volume of assistance delivered to a specific area with the degree of cooperation of local authorities in ensuring unobstructed access.
• Serious investment in the Humanitarian–Development–Peace Nexus:
  Allocate a fixed proportion of humanitarian funding (for example 15–20%) to long-term development projects such as livelihoods and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure, implemented in parallel with emergency aid even in the absence of a complete political settlement.

2. For Humanitarian Organizations

• Redesign programs to break the cycle of dependency:
  Cash and food assistance programs should include mandatory “graduation components” such as vocational training, small business support, and temporary employment to enable capable households to gradually transition from aid dependence to self-reliance.
• Focus on local economic resilience:
  Instead of scattered small projects, interventions should prioritize support for local value chains such as agriculture, fisheries, and handicrafts to strengthen local economies and create sustainable employment opportunities.
• Enhance transparency and evidence-based advocacy:
  Systematically document the impact of political restrictions and bureaucratic barriers using quantitative evidence.

3. For the Yemeni Government

To transform the government’s role from a mere recipient of aid into an active partner in leading recovery, the following measures are recommended:

• Bridging the funding gap through economic diplomacy:
  Rather than simply requesting more funding, the government should launch an economic diplomacy initiative to negotiate with donors to allocate a portion of humanitarian funding to development projects implemented through state institutions, such as cash-for-work programs for infrastructure rehabilitation. It should also seek agreements with international financial institutions to convert part of Yemen’s debt into investments in vital sectors such as health, education, and water.
• Activating the Nexus approach:
  The government should lead the implementation of the Nexus approach by launching pilot integrated programs in selected geographic areas that connect emergency assistance with sustainable livelihood projects and the rehabilitation of basic services. It should also empower local authorities through direct budget allocations and establish a joint inter-ministerial body (planning, finance, agriculture, etc.) responsible for aligning humanitarian response plans with national development priorities.
• Ensuring safe access through a “national humanitarian corridor”:
  Establish a central administrative body responsible for issuing movement permits for humanitarian organizations and forming joint monitoring committees (government, UN, and community representatives) to supervise aid distribution and ensure it reaches beneficiaries while holding accountable any party obstructing humanitarian work.
• Promoting self-reliance through productive sectors:
  Launch a national program to support wheat production and agriculture, including concessional loans, improved seeds, and technical assistance for farmers to increase domestic production and reduce reliance on imports. In parallel, revive the fisheries sector by rehabilitating small fishing ports and providing support to fishermen to strengthen food security and generate employment.
• Ensuring accountability through a “national transparency platform”:
  Establish a unified and transparent electronic platform that publicly displays all humanitarian and development projects, their funding levels, areas of implementation, and numbers of beneficiaries, while allowing citizens to submit complaints and feedback directly. This would strengthen trust among both donors and local communities.

Study Conclusion

The outcome of ten years of humanitarian work in Yemen presents a historic moment that goes beyond numbers and indicators. Yemen today is not merely a humanitarian crisis, but a global testing ground for the limits and capacities of the international system in responding to protracted conflicts. The experience has shown that assistance that does not contain within it the seeds of self-reliance ultimately prolongs fragility under the guise of saving lives.

The results of the CMO analysis confirm that the continued institutional separation between humanitarian and economic pathways reproduces structural fragility rather than resolving it. This lesson must be understood: resources have been exhausted in addressing symptoms while the underlying disease continues to weaken both the state and society. Humanitarian response cannot remain neutral toward economic collapse. In the Yemeni context, currency stability and salary payments are not merely political issues—they represent the core of humanitarian action, as the rising cost of living often inflicts more harm on people than bullets.

---