A total of 60,532 displaced households in Taiz governorate, (approximately 419,068 individuals), and 110,276 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) returnee households (around 771,467 individuals) were recorded since 2015 by International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), according to a recent analysis published by IOM.
The analysis found that “Since the onset of Yemen’s conflict in 2015, Ta’iz Governorate has witnessed one of the longest and most fragmented battlefronts in the country making number of people displaced increased sharply in a short period of time”.
As displacement continues to be protracted, a majority of IDPs prefer to stay in their current location (69%) , a small percentage prefer to return to their origin (21%) or did not yet decide (7%) and the rest preferred to re-settle somewhere else in Yemen.
In addition to understanding the intention of the affected population toward available solutions, it is crucial to understand current living conditions to gauge progress made towards solutions some ten years after the start of the nationwide conflict.
IOM analytic study provides information on progress towards solutions by comparing the living conditions of IDPs and IDP returnees to the living conditions of the host community as a benchmark across seven criteria: (1) Long Term Safety and Security, (2) Adequate Standard of Living, (3) Access to Employment and Livelihoods, (4) Effective & Accessible Mechanisms to Restore Housing, Land and Property (HLP) (5) Access to Personal Documentation and Participation, (6) Family Reunification and Participation, and (7) Access to Effective Remedies and Justice.
The analysis results show that access to personal documentation is the most challenging criteria to overcome by all target populations as they face issues when attempting to replace documents. Employment and livelihoods represent the second most challenging criteria to overcome. Although the majority of families have at least one working household member, most households experience difficulties with achieving a stable source of income. Moreover, most families were unable to make savings exposing them to economic instability and shock. The third most challenging criteria to overcome was found to be adequate standards of living criteria especially due to difficulties of almost half of IDP and IDP returnees with access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation facilities and healthcare.
The findings of the analysis indicate that all population groups face similar challenges and have a similar level of capacity to overcome the challenges regardless of their displacement status. These shared challenges indicate the presence of wider development needs within communities also affected by displacement.
Lastly, findings successfully identified in which geographical areas target populations faced specific challenges to overcome based on the assessed criteria to enable the identification of target areas of intervention.