When The Bombing Started On 26 March, UNICEF’s Yemen Country Representative: Humanitarian Agility in Action Case Study, UCD, Ireland

Initial Steps

When the bombing started on 26 March, UNICEF’s Yemen Country Representative, Julien Harneis, happened to be in Cairo, where he had stopped on his way to Amman. The next day, on arrival in Jordan, he went to the Middle East North Africa Regional Office (MONARO) and prepared for the likely evacuation of UNICEF staff from Yemen.

In Copenhagen, the Supply Division (SD) had a tried and tested model for initial emergency response. This process involved the Deputy Director or Director of the SD and an Emergency Coordination Unit (ECU) Specialist traveling to the affected country. They would meet the Country Representative, program staff, and supply teams to quickly draw up a 90-day strategy.

In this particular case, traveling to Yemen was impossible, so the SD/ECU team went to Amman and Djibouti instead. With the Yemen Country Office (YCO) management already evacuated from Yemen and installed together with the MONARO personnel in Amman, the initial response promised to be even swifter than usual.

 – Rerouting Ships and Chartering Planes

The person initially in charge of coordinating the Yemen response was Paul Molinaro, Regional Chief of Supply and Logistics in the MONARO. On 27 March, the day after the first airstrikes, he asked the SD to identify ships with UNICEF cargo on board and Yemen as destinations for them to reroute or stop loading. Molinaro also explored the possibility of chartering a flight to Sana’a to deliver urgently needed aid and instructed the YCO to make a funding requisition accordingly.

Through UNICEF’s Office in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Molinaro learned that the Coalition had introduced a process to grant flight approval to Sana’a. By using contacts in the Saudi government, a permit was applied for and an aircraft in Denmark was loaded with aid cargo from the SD on 2 April. However, delivering these supplies proved to be a major challenge. After withdrawals of fly-over and landing permissions from several countries, a stopover in Djibouti including a change of planes, and five permit applications to the Coalition, the cargo finally reached Sana’a on 10 April. UNICEF was the first humanitarian organization, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to fly in aid to Yemen. However, one simple delivery had taken eight days of intense work and frustrated hopes.

– Reorganisation of Staff

The MONARO, which was usually preoccupied with Syria and Iraq, now also turned its attention to Yemen. The fact that Julien Harneis, the Yemen Country Representative, was already working in the same building made this task much easier than it could have been.

By 6 April, one day after its evacuation from Yemen, the YCO management team had reassembled in Amman and were fully operational in temporary offices. With both the temporary YCO and the Regional Office (RO) in the same location, planning and implementation were simplified. If something needed to be done, Molinaro could suggest a solution in collaboration with the SD, and get both country and regional sign-off concurrently, enabling rapid action. It also helped that Molinaro had previously worked in the SD. Not only did he have trusted contacts in Copenhagen; he also knew exactly how things worked there.

This set-up continued until May 2015, when international YCO staff returned to Yemen.

– Allocating Funds

YCO staff in Amman prepared a proposal for UNICEF’s Emergency Programme Fund (EPF), requesting resources to handle the immediate response. They received USD 3 million. In the meantime, as the Country Representative, Julien Harneis had – and used – the authority to reallocate funds from different projects in Yemen to address the crisis. In addition, the RO was able to “lend” the YCO water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) supplies from regional stocks in Amman.

Thanks to its flexible method for finding and allocating resources, UNICEF could provide emergency aid almost as soon as the bombings started. This served not only to help children in dire need but also as a foundation for the future response – including the ingenious “Hub” solution.