Lahj governor and UN-Habitat discuss rehabilitating 160 homes in al-Houta
Yemen Herald News 
AL-HOUTA, Yemen — Lahj Governor Murad al-Halimi and representatives of UN-Habitat discussed rehabilitating 160 damaged homes in al-Houta on Wednesday, alongside water, sanitation and farm works.
The meeting included the programme’s coordinator in Yemen, Mohammed Aidarous, and Bassam Thabet, an engineer on its technical team, according to the state news agency Saba.
The two sides reviewed housing and service interventions planned for 2026 and 2027, Saba said. Priorities are to follow assessed need.
The account of the meeting rests on Saba, which is run by the internationally recognised government. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of it.
Al-Halimi asked for a survey of the damaged houses and a list of beneficiary families drawn from verified data, the agency reported.
He directed the governorate’s public works and roads office, with other bodies, to prepare those schedules quickly so repair work could begin.
The governor said the local authority in Lahj would provide the facilities needed for the project to proceed.
Talks also covered a project to raise resilience to climate change, water scarcity and flooding in the Tuban delta, which Saba described as climate-fund financed without naming the fund.
UN-Habitat is the implementing entity for an Adaptation Fund project of that description in the delta. The fund’s board approved it on Oct. 4, 2025.
The grant is USD 9,998,560, according to the fund’s public project record. Of that, USD 1,188,329 has been transferred.
Work began on Oct. 28, 2025 and is scheduled to run three and a half years, to April 2029. The record lists the status as under implementation.
Yemen’s Ministry of Water and Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation and the Cooperative and Agricultural Credit Bank are named as executing entities.
The water and sanitation components discussed on Wednesday include rehabilitating wastewater basins at al-Wahat and Tahrur, Saba said.
The programme would also build water tanks and set up laboratories to test water and wastewater samples.
Solar systems are planned to run water wells in al-Houta and in al-Wahat and al-Mahalla in Tuban district, the agency reported. The stated aim is steadier supply and more efficient well operation.
On agriculture, the two sides discussed repairing irrigation canals and rehabilitating their gates.
Gabion walls would be built to slow erosion of farmland and installations across the delta, Saba said.
UN-Habitat’s representatives said the interventions were being arranged in coordination with the Lahj leadership and related bodies, according to the agency.
The meeting called for coordination between the programme, the local authority and other bodies so that work reaches the areas and groups assessed as most in need.
The Tuban delta sits in Lahj and drains toward Aden. UN-Habitat has published a climate change vulnerability assessment of the delta, mapping flood risk and water stress.
The delta’s lower reach covers 1,030 square kilometres and holds about 1.13 million people, according to the proposal submitted to the fund. Close to 1.08 million of them live in Aden governorate and about 50,000 in Lahj.
One component of that project funds training for water-sector staff in the Lahj and Aden governorates to carry out hydrological and water-resource assessments.
Another sets up a disaster management plan and an early warning system at Dukum, in the upper delta, to alert residents when flow passes 150 cubic metres a second.
Yemen’s minister of water and environment announced the USD 9.9 million package for the delta, Yemen TV reported.
UN-Habitat and the water ministry had already assessed climate vulnerability in the delta under an earlier Green Climate Fund readiness grant, which mapped drought, flood and sea-level risk.
Al-Houta is the seat of the Lahj governorate administration.
Housing repair in Lahj has drawn other funding. The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen said this year it had signed a second phase of an adequate housing initiative with UN-Habitat covering 620 homes in Aden, Taiz and Lahj.
Neither Saba nor the governorate said whether the 160 houses discussed on Wednesday form part of that package.
That agreement was signed with UN-Habitat on the sidelines of the 13th World Urban Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan. It also covers vocational training for 220 unemployed young people and qualification for about 50 government technical staff in housing rehabilitation and construction.
The initiative’s first phase closed in September 2024 after rehabilitating 650 homes, the Saudi programme said, reaching more than 4,500 people.
The same programme announced a wider package of 28 development projects for Yemen this year, valued at 1.9 billion Saudi riyals, or about USD 506 million.
Al-Halimi has held similar meetings this year. Saba reported him discussing expanded relief and development work with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and humanitarian programmes with Action For Humanity and the Modern Social Foundation.
OCHA’s 2026 humanitarian needs and response plan lists more than 22 million people in need across Yemen. It puts 18.3 million at acute food insecurity and 5.2 million as internally displaced.
The plan seeks USD 2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.
It also records more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.
Saba gave no start date for the repairs in al-Houta, and no value for the housing component.
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