Cairo, 24 July 2023 – A new US$2 million agreement signed today with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre (KSrelief) and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund will provide 900,000 of the most vulnerable women and girls with gender-based violence response services in southern areas of Yemen. 

The funding will help increase access to quality gender-based violence response services across six governorates in southern Yemen, where protection needs of women and girls are severe. This includes the provision of psychosocial support services, legal aid and livelihood opportunities for survivors of gender-based violence, through support to 12 safe spaces, two safe shelters and mobile outreach protection teams. 

“UNFPA’s continued partnership with KSrelief has been critical in enabling our teams on the ground to reach thousands of women and girls impacted by the crisis in Yemen,” said Ms. Laila Baker, UNFPA Arab States Regional Director. Thanks to KSrelief’s generous support and renewed commitment, women and girls in the most hard-to-reach areas of Yemen will be able to access gender-based violence services they urgently need to safeguard their physical and mental wellbeing.”

Nearly a quarter of Yemeni women require services to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. Displacement and the breakdown of protection mechanisms resulting from conflict have drastically increased the vulnerability of women and girls to violence and abuse, with them increasingly resorting to negative coping strategies to survive. 

The partnership between KSrelief and UNFPA in Yemen since 2015 has helped to reach hundreds of thousands of women and girls with reproductive health and protection information and services. 

UNFPA leads the coordination and provision of gender-based violence services across the country. UNFPA is also the sole provider of life-saving reproductive health medicines in Yemen. To keep reaching the most vulnerable women and girls, UNFPA requires US$70 million in 2023. To date, only 43 per cent of funding has been received. 

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UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.

For more information, please contact:

In Cairo: Samir Aldarabi, Regional Media Adviser for the United Nations Population Fund for the Arab States Region,  +201068484879, aldarabi@unfpa.org

In Sana’a: Taha Yaseen, Tel: +967 712 224090; yaseen@unfpa.org