SERVICES: National Platforms

Yemen

Context: A Community Engagement Working Group (CEWG) was established in late 2015 to facilitate and better coordinate system-wide communication and engagement with affected populations in the humanitarian response. The group is chaired by UNICEF, with OCHA providing a secretariat role.

The CEWG works to establish common, shared mechanisms to ensure that affected people have accurate, relevant and timely information to make informed decisions to protect themselves and their families and to ensure that the overall humanitarian response is systematically informed by the views of affected communities. Among its first priorities was to develop a framework for accountability to affected populations (AAP) for inclusion in the Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan (YHRP), based on agency and cluster best practices and to raise the profile of AAP at cluster, inter-cluster and Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) levels.

Government Ministry or Dept links: N/A

Leads/Chairs/Co-Chairs: UNICEF and OCHA

National and international actors involved: The CEWG comprises 25 participating agencies with over 100 staff on the mailing list, including from the UN and international and national NGOs. 

Donors: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Opportunities and challenges: Communities, authorities and implementing partners are not homogenous stakeholders across Yemen and as a consequence, the operation lacks specific, tailored approaches to inclusive, gender sensitive participatory approaches, including how information is shared and feedback gathered within different population groups. This requires a more deliberate approach to both informal and formal mechanisms to gathering, analysing, sharing and acting on community feedback through existing and new monitoring processes. In a recent analysis, it was commonly reported by stakeholders that data from the national planning level has not made a significant impact at the operational level. The need to disaggregate data and analysis was frequently identified as an impediment to informing area and issue-based planning and response strategies. This is particularly important for tailored community engagement and communication strategies to different segments of the civilian population. A key limitation was perceived to be a focus on the national-level with significant gaps between national and sub-national coordination. 

An OCHA specialist mission recently recommended that a ‘Results Group’ on Accountability and Inclusion be established to support clusters to proactively eradicate abuse and systematically include feedback and diverse representation into the Yemen response operation. There is an opportunity to consolidate the work of AAP, PSEA, Gender and Inclusion into a more complementary outcome-orientated technical coordination group in support of the Intercluster, to streamline various activities and render them more effective. 

The Community Engagement Retreat on 16 December 2019 in Sana’a was attended by 31 participants representing UN agencies, INGOs, NGOs and cluster coordinators. The aim was to review results for 2018/2019 interventions, achievements, as well as assess strengths and weaknesses in implementing the plans, and to develop strategic plan for 2020. Partners organisations and clusters presented their work in 2019, highlighting key achievements and challenges as well as providing recommendations for the way forward.

The objectives of the retreat were to develop a 2020 workplan for community engagement efforts that:

  • Enables the integration of information sharing, community feedback and perceptions and participation into cluster and inter-cluster analysis

  • Ensures that the humanitarian response planning is participatory (where feasible) and informed by analysis

  • Integrates and coordinates community information and feedback, as well as aggregated analysis at an inter-agency level

  • Safeguards accountable implementation that is coordinated and informed by community participation and feedback systems (including SEA)

The recommendations from the retreat were to:

  • Identify dedicated inter-agency support for leading CEWG, establishing hub-level coordination mechanisms, and engaging with national and local authorities on AAP/CE issues

  • Create mechanism for analysis and reporting on agency/cluster/partner complaints and feedback data to inform response planning

  • Include regular updates on community engagement and accountability to affected populations in HCT meetings 

  • Establish CEWG hub-level sub-working groups to de-centralize CE/AAP efforts 

  • Develop Yemen-specific CE/AAP guidance and training materials to guide clusters and build partner capacity.

Download the presentation that details the results of the retreat.