Integrated Famine Risk Reduction (IFRR)

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is complex and multi-faceted. Yemen is among the countries with the highest number of people in Acute Food Insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above). Despite the six-month truce (April – October 2022), the main driver of this dire situation remains the unresolved conflict situation that has caused population displacement, widespread infrastructure damages, reduced agricultural production, constraints to freedom of movements of people and goods, disruption to livelihood. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis run in September 2022, approximately 17 million people, or over half of the population, are likely food insecure. Malnutrition rates among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world, with 1.3 million pregnant or breastfeeding women and 2.2 million children under 5 requiring treatment for acute malnutrition. By late 2022, more than 17.8 million people, including 9.2 million children, lacked access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene services. The country continues to experience outbreaks of cholera, measles, diphtheria, and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

In the spirit of the inter-cluster collaboration the Nutrition, Food Security and Agriculture (FSAC), Health and WASH clusters have agreed to support integrated programming with a focus on famine risk reduction (IFRR) in Yemen. This IFRR collaborative approach was initiated in 2017, and after a wide consultation with partners the approach was operationalized with a set of pilot products. After the 2018 pilot year an evaluation was done but the approach suffered from the Covid Crisis and lost momentum. Mid 2022, the IFRR approach was revigorated, the IFRR coordination group was put back in place in a dynamic manner with regular meetings held, a strategic note elaborated, and a combined severity approach adopted to identify the areas with the highest emergency response needs. The IFRR offers a monthly follow up of the combined sectors performances for the 96 districts with the highest combined severity.

IFRR is an operational facilitator within the Cluster coordination structure to promote integration of Health, Nutrition, WASH and Food Security & Agriculture humanitarian responses to guide sectorial actions towards convergence and/or complementarities. IFRR aims at strengthening the geographical prioritization, harmonized response packages and joint monitoring framework among the four clusters and promotes complementary responses towards agreed priority areas. IFRR is not a standalone approach, but rather leverages on the inter-cluster coordination mechanism and seeks to complement workstreams by other humanitarian and development actors. The reconstruction of a social fabric with a community focus, the building of resilient food systems in complementarity with longer term economic strategies although essential are complementary to the IFRR strategy. Therefore, linkages with the Nexus, the Economic framework, and Social Protection programmes such as safety nets will be done at the strategic and conceptual level to encourage needed complementarities.

The “Operational Guidelines: Integrated programming for famine risk reduction (IFRR), Draft for field testing” is outdated, a new operational approach is under development.

Mr. Patrick Vercammen
IFRR Coordinator
patrick.vercammen@wfp.org

Mr. Muhammad Fawad Khan
Health Cluster Coordinator
khanmu@who.int

Mr. Reuel Kirathi Mungai
Nutrition Cluster Coordinator
rkmungai@unicef.org

Ms. Abigael Nyukuri
FSAC Cluster Coordinator
Abigael.Nyukuri@fao.org

Mr. Frederic Patigny
WASH Cluster Coordinator
fpatigny@unicef.org

Ms. Haneen Abu Raed
IFRR Information Manager
haburaed@immap.org

• Operational Guidance on Yemen Integrated Famine Risk Reduction Programming, Final guidance for pilot July 2018
• Standard integrated programming response package for famine risk reduction - Report of the workshop, Yemen
• Clarification on FSAC, Health, WASH and Nutrition Clusters’ integrated programming response package for famine risk reduction - 2018
• IFRR operationalisation workshop: meeting minutes, Al Hudaydah, 29 January 2018
• IFRR operationalisation workshop: meeting minutes, Al Hudaydah, 30 January 2018
• Report of the meeting to pilot implementation of the integrated famine risk reduction package in Aden-20 Mar 2018
• Minutes of the workshop to support operationalisation of the integrated programming for famine risk reduction (IFRR) – Aden- 19 March 2018