How well is humanitarian assistance targeted in fragile environments? Evidence from the announcement of a food emergency in Yemen

The amount of assistance delivered during conflict is increasing to support the growing share of the extreme poor living in these settings. However, little is known about how well assistance is targeted, which can have implications for conflict itself. Using a novel data source in Yemen that tracks food assistance, which accounts for the largest share of assistance in the country, we find that the share of households receiving food assistance significantly increased following the U.N. announcement of a food emergency and that the increases were larger in regions identified by the U.N. as being closer to famine. Furthermore, the increases in assistance helped to maintain food access through repeated and strong conflict-related shocks. The results demonstrate that the humanitarian community can rapidly and effectively increase assistance when needed. However, the lack of a stronger and more immediate impact on food access suggests potential improvements to data collection, which could help to better identify households most in need of humanitarian assistance and could help to better identify how food assistance impacts households in humanitarian emergencies.