Yemen: Education Cluster Strategy 2016-2017

The conflict in Yemen has taken a severe toll on civilians. The escalation of the conflict beginning in March 2015 has “severely exacerbated Yemen’s pre-existing humanitarian crisis” and resulted in a drastic change of the education situation in the country. While Yemen has suffered from chronic underdevelopment and a series of localized conflicts, this level of emergency and the magnitude of its impact on children’s education as well as the schools and education facilities is beyond what the education sector was prepared to handle. Within the last three months of the school year 2014-2015, the conflict forced 3,584 schools to close, thus depriving around 1.84 million children of access to education. Displacement of families from unsafe areas to ones that are relatively safer is expected to put more pressure on the resources and limited facilities in host communities, thus increasing the need amongst them for emergency support in education. Due to the intensity of the conflict in Yemen, the country was declared an L3 emergency by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on July 1, 2015.

Since the Cluster approach was formally initiated in Yemen in 2009, the country has undergone major unrest and crises that require strong coordination of educational activities at both the central and the governorate and district level. UNICEF and Save the Children co-lead the Yemen Education Cluster (YEC), modeling the global co-lead arrangement, with overall support being given to the newly established Education in Emergency Committee of the MoE. Since the context of emergency in Yemen, the Education Cluster has been working closely with the MoE to track the impact of the conflict on education and ensure that measures are taken to minimize the negative consequences on children’s right to education. The overarching goal of the Education Cluster will be to ensure access to safe, equitable and quality education and to strengthen the capacity of the education system and communities to deliver a timely and evidence-based education response. The cluster will ensure strong partnership at a community level through its sub-national cluster coordination mechanisms in order to reach the set targets.