Each day humanitarian cargo – from generators to cholera kits – arrive in Aden, Hodeidah and Sana’a and is stored in facilities coordinated by the Logistics Cluster on behalf of the humanitarian community. In 2019, this storage space is set to increase to support the rapidly growing needs of organisations responding to an increasingly complex humanitarian crisis.
In Sana’a, Logistics Cluster Coordinator Christophe Morard has just finished a meeting on the latest cargo movement. Throughout the week, he’s continuing work with partners on establishing cold-chain and temperature-controlled storage for life-saving medical supplies. Tomorrow, he’s picking up on discussions about increasing fuel station capacity in Aden.
The work is diverse, busy, and collaborative. But in the midst of an emergency of this scope and scale, it’s also critical.
“The end of 2018 saw a scale-up of humanitarian efforts across all sectors. We’re increasing our footprint to help organisations implement their programmes in the fastest and best way possible. We want to make sure the responding community has the tools and access to essential logistics infrastructure that’s needed to address the huge humanitarian needs at hand,” Said Christophe.
Nearly four years of conflict and severe economic decline have driven the country to the brink of famine. In December 2018, the latest Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) report was released, and the numbers were telling. For the first time, assessments confirmed the worst levels of hunger in Yemen: over 20 million Yemenis are food insecure, including nearly 240,000 who are facing catastrophic food consumption gaps. Today, Yemen faces the world’s largest food security crisis.
What’s more, an escalation and intensification of conflict in 2018 has also led to massive number of displacements from and within the Hodeidah Governorate, bringing new challenges to humanitarian access and congestion at one of the country’s major entry points.
“We’re coordinating constantly, and it is incredibly important to do so. Every week we see new challenges and new bottlenecks, we therefore need to streamline our activities, working together on a common response; a shared goal.”
Over the past months, the Logistics Cluster has undertaken extensive consultations with organisations in Sana’a, Aden and Hodeidah on what’s required where, to support the humanitarian community throughout 2019.
Key activities identified for 2019 include increasing cargo airlifts services to both Sana’a and Aden for urgently needed items; establishing cold-chain and temperature-controlled storage facilities; creating a One Stop Shop for Customs Clearance in Sana’a, Anden and Ibb; and continuing to address fuel shortages, through an increase in capacity in Aden, Ibb and Bajil. Thirty additional Mobile Storage Units are also set to arrive soon: twenty will be used for common storage in Aden, and the remaining ten will be on-hand for Logistics Cluster partners.
Keep up to date the with latest operational updates from Yemen here. Throughout 2018, the Logistics Cluster in Yemen ensured vital humanitarian cargo got to where it needed to. Read more on the team's massive achievements on our annual overview: https://bit.ly/2U81CZa