AMMAN, 28 January 2019 - UN-Habitat launched a new project to gather data on seven cities in Yemen to support them in coping with the impact of the ongoing conflict.

The meeting, hosted at in Amman, brought together 22 participants, including 13 Yemeni high level participants from national and city levels, to launch the project “Rapid City and Neighbourhood Profiling Towards a Development Oriented Urban Recovery Process in Yemen”, funded by the European Union with a total budget of nearly USD 2.36 million.

The project will establish a comprehensive Urban Information and Analysis Framework that extends from neighbourhood to city level. The framework will support several types of analysis including assessing damage at all levels, population shifts, urban functionality and informal/ formal human settlements. In coordination with the United Nations Humanitarian Country Team the project will support critically affected cities across Yemen.

The meeting discussed the objectives, methodology, coordination mechanism and the expected results of the project and agreed on the seven cities being profiled including Sana’a and Aden.

The project will ensure that humanitarian, recovery and development investments are better targeted and coordinated to help the residents cope with the impacts of the conflict.

In addition, the project is expected to achieve the following results:

  1. A web-based geo-database portal will be designed and operational in six cities as an Urban Information Management System, scalable to other cities in the future.
  2. Damage Assessment in seven cities and one Synthesis Report summarizing main findings; seven City Profiles and up to twelve Neighbourhood Profiles, including Action Plans. Among others, priority locations include five cities in addition to Sana’a and Aden identified by the participants as follows; Ta’iz, al- Hudaydah, Sa'ada, Al-Hawtah and Zinjibar.
  3. A National Urban Recovery/ Reconstruction Strategy and up to four City Recovery Strategies. In partnership with national and local actors.

UN-Habitat Deputy Regional Director Dr. Erfan Ali spoke about the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) putting a strain on existing services and infrastructure in smaller cities. He said: “The impact of the conflict in Yemen is mainly urban. Even though key cities have faced different levels of destruction, secondary and tertiary cities have become ports for reverse population movement transforming them into hosting areas for IDPs.”

The project will also help the reconstruction efforts once the conflict is ended.