OCHA says 18,000 displaced families have received aid on Yemen’s west coast
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — The UN humanitarian agency said about 18,000 displaced families have received aid along Yemen’s west coast as fighting drives new displacement.
Peter Ekayu, deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, gave the figure in Aden.
He spoke after meeting Mukhtar al-Yafei, the minister of social affairs and labour, in the temporary capital on Sunday.
Saba, the Yemeni government’s news agency, reported the meeting.
Ekayu described a response in stages. It opens with emergency assistance delivered within 72 hours, he said.
Cash payments follow, then shelter, then support through specialist humanitarian sectors, according to Ekayu.
He said the agency was also organising and updating displacement data to direct the response.
The two reviewed a report on humanitarian work in Aden, Lahj, Abyan and al-Dhalea, Yemen Monitor reported.
The report covered funding levels, delivery rates and coordination between the organisations working in each sector.
Al-Yafei pressed for stronger joint coordination channels, according to the accounts of the meeting.
The ministry attributed the displacement to what it called military escalation by the Houthi militia on the west coast.
The Houthis describe their operations differently. Yemen Herald found no Houthi comment on the meeting.
The account of the meeting rests on the Yemeni government’s news agency and on Yemen Monitor’s report of it. No independent confirmation has been published, and Yemen Herald could not reach either participant.
Displacement on the west coast has risen through September.
Yemen’s Executive Unit for the Management of Displaced Persons Camps recorded 21,583 families, or 146,943 people, displaced across eight provinces between September 1 and 18.
Taiz took the largest number. The unit logged 11,534 families arriving across 15 districts of the province.
The unit is the government body that registers displaced people and runs their camps.
Ali al-Shumairi, who directs the Executive Unit for displacement camps in Taiz, put that governorate’s total at 65,845 people through 15 September.
He said the movement began on 10 August. About 95% of those displaced came from five districts where the fighting was heaviest, according to al-Shumairi.
He named Jabal Habashi, al-Maafer, Maqbana and al-Waziyah among them.
Camps in Taiz have taken in more people than they were built to hold, the local authority said.
UN agencies had put the two-week total at about 112,000 people earlier in the month.
The UN refugee agency said last week it had allocated USD 2 million for the latest wave.
OCHA said aid agencies reached 10.83 million people in Yemen between January and the middle of the year.
The UN refugee agency asked donors for USD 14 million this month for Yemenis displaced along the western coast.
UNHCR put the number of newly displaced at more than 100,000 at that point.
The agency said more than 2,400 people had crossed the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Djibouti over four days.
Yemen’s government asked the United Nations this month to expand its operations out of Aden.
The agency set out the wider need in its plan published in March.
It said more than 22 million people in Yemen require assistance.
OCHA put the number of acutely food insecure at 18.3 million.
It recorded more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, including 516,157 severe cases.
The plan counted 5.2 million internally displaced people across the country.
OCHA sought USD 2.16 billion to reach 12 million of them.
The World Health Organization said nearly 20 million people in Yemen need health assistance.
Funding has not kept pace with those figures, according to the agencies’ own reporting.
The west coast runs from Hodeidah south towards Bab al-Mandab.
Houthi forces took control of stretches of that coastline in early September, Al Jazeera reported on 11 September.
The advance shifted front lines in Taiz, Lahj and Hodeidah governorates.
Aid access has narrowed in places along the route.
Yemen’s health ministry said this month that aid facilities in Khokha had been looted.
The ministry said the losses reduced what it could deliver in the district.
Al-Yafei has held a series of meetings with aid organisations this month.
The ministry of social affairs and labour registers displaced families and oversees social welfare programmes.
OCHA coordinates the work of UN agencies and non-governmental organisations operating in the country.
Aden has served as the seat of the internationally recognised government since 2015. The Houthis have held Sanaa since 2014.
Yemen’s state minister for displacement and irregular migration met the Danish Refugee Council’s representative in Aden this month, Saba reported.
Bab al-Mandab links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries a large share of the shipping between Europe and Asia.
The strait narrows to about 30 kilometres between the Yemeni and Djiboutian shores.
The Executive Unit reports to the government seated in Aden.
OCHA’s plan covers the 2026 calendar year.
The west coast figure Ekayu gave is counted in families rather than individuals.
OCHA has not said how many of those families received each stage of the response.
Ekayu gave no figure for how much of the west coast operation is funded.
The ministry has not published a timetable for the next review.
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