UNDP Poverty Report 2000

The Contribution of Poverty Reduction to Nation Building

Yemen faced formidable challenges in the 1990s - including the need to unite the North and South, periodic internal military conflicts, the return of 800,000 workers during the 1991 Gulf war and high population growth. Despite these problems, it has been moving aggressively ahead to launch a concerted campaign against poverty.

Although there is no official estimate of poverty in Yemen, the unofficial results from a 1998 government survey suggest that about 30% of the population is poor. Defining poverty clearly and establishing a monitoring system would be a big help in coordinating anti-poverty activities and evaluating their impact. A Poverty Information Monitoring System is being developed to do this.

The country does not yet have a national plan to reduce poverty, though the government has some nationwide programmes and donor-supported projects. UNDP is supporting the development of both a monitoring system and a National Action Plan for Poverty Eradication.

A comprehensive structural adjustment programme has brought down government deficits and inflation, but growth has not kept pace with the population and has had little impact on poverty. Public employment can no longer be used as a cushion against poverty, and the private sector has not grown fast enough to provide jobs.

The National Committee for the Social Safety Net, chaired by the prime minister, deals with the adverse effects of economic reform and coordinates anti-poverty efforts. The Ministry of State for Cabinet Affairs runs the committee's secretariat, but so far the committee has met only twice and the secretariat needs more capacity to manage activities. The Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs might be more suitable for running the secretariat, but this arrangement would tend to identify poverty as only a social issue.

Duplicating Poverty Programmes

The National Committee for the Social Safety Net has responsibility for four major national programmes:

The $50 million Social Welfare Fund, run by the government.
The $86 million Social Fund for Development, funded by the World Bank and other donors.
The $88 million Public Works Project, funded by both the gov-ernment and the World Bank.
The $43 million Poverty Alleviation and Employment Generation Programme, supported by UNDP, the United Nations Capital Development Fund and the World Food Programme.

The government's Social Welfare Fund, managed by the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs, focuses on directing cash transfers to needy families, but is shifting towards a development orientation rather than a welfare approach.

One problem with the different steering committees and boards is that they duplicate many of the func-tions of line ministries, whose capacities are not being built as part of the process. Moreover, the multiplicity of structures stretches the capacity of the government to provide coordination.

Another drawback is that the poverty reduction efforts are not organized in a well-defined development framework. In 1995 the First Five-Year Plan for a united Yemen hardly mentioned poverty, and the plan's implementation appears to have been overtaken by the demands of the structural adjustment programme.

The Pros and Cons of Decentralization

Targeting could be improved if government were more decentralized and civil society organizations more active. The number of civil society organizations has been growing, but most are still in the main cities. Yemen's experience with decentral-ized development dates to its local development associations of the late 1960s, which mobilized most of their resources from local communities to build schools and health clinics.

Since 1991 the governorates have had some autonomy for developing infrastructure and providing public services, but decentralization reforms have been limited. The election of mayors, local council members and other representatives has not yet been approved. Governors continue to be appointed by the president. The fear is that decentralization carried out too quickly and radically will strengthen tribalism and threaten the new, hard-won unity.

UNDP has been supporting more decentralized development through its assistance to the government's Regional Development Programme, being piloted in five governorates. Modelled on the Area Development Schemes in Sudan, the programme emphasizes community self-reliance rather than simple microcredit or technical assistance. This involves thorough discussions with participants at the start of the project to mobilize their support for building organizations at three different levels: small microcredit groups of three to five households, community associations of about a dozen microcredit groups, and area development schemes formed by several community associations.

Because the approach emphasizes the beneficiaries' self-organization, it can take time to bear results. But communities learn to take control of local development and come together to influence regional decision-making.

Most of UNDP's poverty reduction support is for capacity building, especially for the National Committee for the Social Safety Net. The aim is to foster greater national ownership and control of poverty programmes, by not creating organizations parallel to the government structure. UNDP also encourages a more comprehensive approach - beyond merely providing people with welfare or public sector jobs, as in past practice. The results of the new approach could be slow in coming and are unlikely to be easily measurable.