COMBINED PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENTS / INTEGRATED SAFEGUARDS DATA SHEET (PID/ISDS) Additional Financing . Report No.: PIDISDSA21797 Date Prepared/Updated: 01-May-2017 I. BASIC INFORMATION A. Basic Project Data Country: Yemen, Republic of Project ID: P163729 Parent Project ID (if P159053 any): Project Name: Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project - Second Additional Financing (P163729) Parent Project Name: Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (P159053) Region: MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Estimated Appraisal Date: 04-Apr-2017 Estimated Board Date: 16-May-2017 Practice Area (Lead): Social Protection & Financing Instrument: Investment Project Labor Financing Borrower(s) United Nations Children Fund Implementing Agency UNICEF Is this project processed under OP 8.50 (Emergency Recovery) or Yes OP 8.00 (Rapid Response to Crises and Emergencies)? Financing (in USD Million) Financing Source Amount IDA Grant 75.00 IDA Grant from CRW 125.00 Financing Gap 0.00 Total Project Cost 200.00 Environmental Category: B-Partial Assessment Appraisal Review Decision The review did authorize to proceed with Negotiations, in principle (from Decision Note): Other Decision: Is this a Repeater project? No . . B. Introduction and Context Country Context Yemen’s population is facing an unprecedented food crisis. The UN is predicting famine as a tangible risk in Yemen. The UN Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan (January 2017) estimates that 10.3 million out of 27.4 million Yemenis require immediate assistance to save or sustain lives. Over 17 million Yemenis are considered food insecure (60 percent of the population) of whom 6.8 million are severely food insecure and require immediate food assistance. Nearly 3.3 million, including 462,000 children under five, suffer from severe acute malnutrition (a 57 percent increase since late 2015). The current conditions have created two immediate imperatives that need to be addressed: (i) developing interim trade finance arrangements to avoid disruptions of critical food imports; and (ii) urgently addressing the limited purchasing power by the most vulnerable Yemenis, threatening their food security. To address the first, the IFC is seeking capital financing to establish a trade finance facility that could be accessed by eligible Yemeni financial institutions to finance imports of wheat and rice by eligible local importers. The second imperative – to address the limited food purchasing power– is best addressed by a country-wide cash transfer program (CT). International experience demonstrates that CTs are among the most appropriate social safety net instruments to use in a crisis situation. The proposed AF2 would support an emergency cash transfer program and together with the ongoing support under the parent project and the AF1, would provide livelihoods to the most vulnerable Yemenis in order for them to buy food. The AF2 would scale up the impact of the project and target an additional 1.5 million poor and most vulnerable households, including elderly, disabled and female- headed-households, with targeted cash transfers. Sectoral and Institutional Context Yemen’s social safety net system includes two large national programs: the cash transfer (CT) implemented by the Social Welfare Fund (SWF); and a Cash-for-Works program (CFWs) implemented by the Social Fund for Development (SFD). While the CFW program targets the transitory poor, providing short-term income support during crisis; the SWF program targets the chronic poor and aims to protect them against extreme poverty while promoting investments in human development and economic empowerment of participating households, and therefore engages with the same households over multiple years. Yemen’s national cash transfers (CT) targets the poorest and most vulnerable households on a quarterly basis across all 22 governorates and reaches approximately 1.5 million beneficiary households, totaling about 8–9 million people, which amounts to about 30–35 percent of the population. Females represent 45 percent of the total SWF direct beneficiary cases, and 24 percent of the beneficiary households are female-headed. Around 57 percent of the individuals within SWF targeted households are children under 18 years, totaling 4.25 million children. According to a UNICEF survey (2012–2013), at least 70 percent of SWF beneficiaries depended on CTs to purchase food and strengthen their livelihoods; cash assistance prevented vulnerable households from resorting to negative coping strategies; and social cash transfers helped beneficiaries to improve their access to basic social services, including health, nutrition, and education. Since its inception in 1996, the CT program has been fully funded by the Government of Yemen (GoY) with partial co-financing from the World Bank and the European Union (EU) during 2010- 2014. Prior to the 2015 conflict, the World Bank has been a lead donor agency supporting: CTs (through two emergency CT projects); reforms of the targeting and delivery systems (through the Institutional Support Project - ISP); and policy dialogue with GoY and the donor community. ISP was instrumental in identifying and addressing a number of key deficiencies in the CT delivery systems, and through a long-term Technical Assistance (TA) provided by an international firm with World Bank guidance, much progress has already been achieved (e.g. shifting to poverty based targeting; cleaning beneficiary registry; improving the management information systems (MIS); and developing business process steps and protocols). . C. Proposed Development Objective(s) Original Project Development Objective(s) - ParentPHORGPDO The Project Development Objective is to provide short-term employment and access to selected basic services to the most vulnerable; and preserve existing implementation capacity of two service delivery programs. Proposed Project Development Objective(s) - Additional Financing The Project Development Objective is to provide short-term employment and access to selected basic services to the most vulnerable; preserve existing implementation capacity of two service delivery programs; and provide emergency cash transfers to the poor and vulnerable in response to the food crisis. Key Results The achievement of the revised PDO will be measured by the following key indicators: (a) The number of direct beneficiaries of wage employment (disaggregated by gender, youth, and IDPs) to measure coverage of income support (b) The number of people provided with access to key services (disaggregated by gender) to measure potential coverage of community and social services (c) Number of peoplebenefited from the nutrition services (disaggregated by women and children) to measure coverage of the nutrition services (d) The percentage of core staff positions of the SFD and PWP retained to measure preservation of the capacity of these critical national programs (e) The number of beneficiaries of Safety Nets programs - Unconditional cash transfers. . D. Project Description The proposed Additional Financing 2 will scale up the impact of the Emergency Crisis Response Project by including an additional component (Component 3). The new component will deliver emergency cash assistance to about 1.5 million poor and vulnerable households; and finance interventions associated with the management, administration and monitoring of the cash transfers. While the parent project is implemented by UNDP, the AF2 will be implemented by UNICEF. Component 3 will include two sub-components: (3.1) cash transfers; and (3.2) project management and monitoring. Sub-component 3.1: Cash transfers (US$191.1 million). This sub-component will finance cash transfers for 6 months to 1.5 million households with an average benefit amount of YR5000 (equivalent to US$25) per household per month, delivered on a quarterly basis. This sub-component will also finance the associated fee for delivering the cash through a private sector payment agency (financial institutions/banks). The design parameters (targeting, benefit calculation formula, frequency of delivery, coverage, etc.) of the CTs build on those of the national CT program – Social Welfare Fund. Beneficiaries. The direct beneficiaries of the project are those currently in the SWF beneficiary list, identified through poverty targeting and meeting criteria for social vulnerability: elderly, female headed households, orphans, etc. The total estimated number of households to benefit from the cash assistance is 1.5 million (equivalent to 8-9 million individuals, with women accounting for 52 percent of all (direct and indirect) beneficiaries. The cash transfer will cover beneficiaries in all 22 governorates. Targeting. The project will not conduct separate targeting but will rather rely on the existing list of SWF beneficiaries, which in turn is based on a proxy means test (PMT). All the households currently in the SWF beneficiary list will be eligible for the emergency cash transfer. Even though some of the households in the list (18 percent of the total number of beneficiaries) were above the poverty line at the time of the list’s creation (2005/6 Household Budget Survey), poverty in Yemen has since doubled and the likelihood that these households are vulnerable is high, particularly considering the current humanitarian crisis. Sub-component 3.2: CT Program Management and Monitoring (US$8.9 million). The sub-component will support the implementation of the AF, management and M&E to ensure that the program is successfully and efficiently implemented in conformity with the design. This sub-component will finance: (a) UNICEF’s direct cost including staffing and operating expenses; (b) UNICEF’s indirect cost – General Management Support; (c) consultancy services required for technical assistance and implementation support; and (d) rapid evaluation and learning. The consultancy services will include: CT technical and operational support firm; third party monitoring firm (TPM); GRM and case management firm; and communication and field facilitation firm. PHCOMP Component Name: Labor Intensive Works and Community Services Comments ( optional) There is no change to Component 1. PHCOMP Component Name: Project Management and Monitoring Comments ( optional) There is no change to Component 2. PHCOMP Component Name: Emergency Cash Transfer Comments ( optional) The AF2 will introduce a new component, specifically Emergency Cash Transfer for a total Grant amount of US$200 million. This component will include two sub-components: cash transfers and project management and monitoring (PMM) and will be fully implemented by UNICEF. E. Project location and Salient physical characteristics relevant to the safeguard analysis (if known) The project is being implemented on a national level and will cover all of Yemen’s 22 governorates. The project will deliver cash transfers to existing SWF beneficiaries without enrollment of new recipients. This may lead to a risk of social tension due to possible exclusion of poor and vulnerable households. . F. Environmental and Social Safeguards Specialists Amer Abdulwahab Ali Al-Ghorbany( GEN05 ) Ibrahim Ismail Mohammed Basalamah( GSU05 ) II. IMPLEMENTATION While the ECRP is being implemented by UNDP; UNICEF will implement the AF2, given its experience working with the national CT program since 2011, including its current active engagement in implementing a US-funded grant to support the readiness of cash transfer systems, for which the World Bank is also providing technical support. Additionally, UNICEF has been implementing humanitarian cash transfer projects using SWF delivery systems and social workers across Yemen. This experience along with their capacity, field presence and social protection mandate, make UNICEF the most suitable partner for the World Bank to implement the proposed AF. The proposed AF aims at scaling up the impact of the original project by specifically targeting the SWF beneficiary households (chronic poor) with direct cash assistance to improve their purchasing power for food; while at the same time reinstating some hope by resuming the CT program and subsequently resilience. The activities under the proposed AF2 fall under the umbrella of UNICEF’s Social Policy Program aimed at reducing poverty and its impacts and reversing discrimination against children. A key focus of the program is to strengthen social protection systems for greater impact on children. UNICEF is currently operating in Yemen with 230 international and national staff at its headquarters in Sana’a and five regional hubs (Sana’a, Ibb/Taiz, Sa’ada, Hodeida, and Aden). UNICEF has a strong field presence and continues scaling up its capacity and delivery of program, and in parallel, implementing an ambitious decentralization plan. UNICEF has lalso ed the establishment of humanitarian hubs in Ibb and Sa’ada. The proposed AF which addresses the demand side of food security, would complement ongoing efforts by the World Bank and the international community to address the food supply challenge and mobilize the required cash balances for IFC’s US$500 million secured trade finance facility to support access to foreign exchange by Yemeni food importers; as well as an additional financing to the Emergency Health and Nutrition Project (under preparation) for food and micronutrients distribution through UNICEF and WFP. . III. SAFEGUARD POLICIES THAT MIGHT APPLY Safeguard Policies Triggered? Explanation (Optional) Environmental Assessment OP/BP No This policy is not triggered. 4.01 Natural Habitats OP/BP 4.04 No This policy is not triggered. Forests OP/BP 4.36 No This policy is not triggered. Pest Management OP 4.09 No This policy is not triggered. Physical Cultural Resources OP/BP No This policy is not triggered. 4.11 Indigenous Peoples OP/BP 4.10 No This policy is not triggered. Involuntary Resettlement OP/BP 4.12 No This policy is not triggered. Safety of Dams OP/BP 4.37 No This policy is not triggered. Projects on International Waterways No This policy is not triggered. OP/BP 7.50 Projects in Disputed Areas OP/BP No This policy is not triggered. 7.60 . IV. Key Safeguard Policy Issues and Their Management A. Summary of Key Safeguard Issues 1. Describe any safeguard issues and impacts associated with the proposed project. Identify and describe any potential large scale, significant and/or irreversible impacts: Social Safeguards. OP/BP 4.12 (Involuntary Resettlement) will not be triggered under the proposed AF2 due to the fact that the project activities will not entail land acquisition, restriction to access and/or impact on livelihood of beneficiaries. Given the nature of the project involving cash transfers in political and security sensitive environment, communication and consultation with the relevant stakeholders and intended beneficiaries will be critical. under the current circumstances of the country. The TPM will capture the beneficiaries’ experiences with the cash transfer activities and overall compliance with implementation procedures. . In addition, UNICEF will develop and implement a communication plan, a grievance redress mechanism (GRM) system where complaints will be received through several channels. The GRM system will react to all complaints received and ensure that all grievances will be addressed efficiently and effectively. All complaints received by the implementing agency should be recorded and documented for future verifications when needed. The proposed Additional Financing will not finance civil works. However, the classfication of the parent project will be maintained under the Additional Financing. The project is thus classified as Environmental Category B according to the World Bank’s Operation Policy (OP 4.01). 2. Describe any potential indirect and/or long term impacts due to anticipated future activities in the project area: N/A. 3. Describe any project alternatives (if relevant) considered to help avoid or minimize adverse impacts. N/A. 4. Describe measures taken by the borrower to address safeguard policy issues. Provide an assessment of borrower capacity to plan and implement the measures described. N/A 5. Identify the key stakeholders and describe the mechanisms for consultation and disclosure on safeguard policies, with an emphasis on potentially affected people. The proposed AF2 would support an emergency cash transfer program. The AF, together with the ongoing support under the parent project and the first additional financing would provide livelihoods to the most vulnerable Yemenis in order for them to buy food. The AF2 would scale up the impact of the project and target an additional 1.5 million poor and most vulnerable households, including elderly, disabled and female-headed-households, with targeted cash transfers. Social accountability will be taken into consideration through: (i) the ability of beneficiaries to voice complaints and provide feedback through well-established GRMs; (ii) dissemination of information about the resumption of the cash transfer program to the intended beneficiaries who were already listed in the program database prior to the conflict and to relevant communities; (iii) independent verification through the third-party monitoring agency; and (iv) the UNICEF’s field monitoring activities. . B. Disclosure Requirements If the project triggers the Pest Management and/or Physical Cultural Resources policies, the respective issues are to be addressed and disclosed as part of the Environmental Assessment/Audit/or EMP. If in-country disclosure of any of the above documents is not expected, please explain why:: . C. Compliance Monitoring Indicators at the Corporate Level PHCompliance The World Bank Policy on Disclosure of Information Have relevant safeguard policies documents Yes [] No [] NA [X] been sent to the World Bank's Infoshop? Have relevant documents been disclosed in- country in a public place in a form and language Yes [] No [] NA [X] that are understandable and accessible to project-affected groups and local NGOs? PHCompliance All Safeguard Policies Have satisfactory calendar, budget and clear institutional responsibilities been prepared for Yes [] No [] NA [X] the implementation of measures related to safeguard policies? Have costs related to safeguard policy measures Yes [] No [] NA [X] been included in the project cost? Does the Monitoring and Evaluation system of the project include the monitoring of safeguard Yes [X] No [] NA [] impacts and measures related to safeguard policies? Have satisfactory implementation arrangements been agreed with the borrower and the same Yes [X] No [] NA [] been adequately reflected in the project legal documents? V. Contact point World Bank PHWB Contact:Afrah Alawi Al-Ahmadi . Title:Sr Social Protection Specialis . Borrower/Client/Recipient PHBorr Name:United Nations Children Fund Contact:NA Title:NA . Email:NA . . Implementing Agencies PHIMP Name:UNICEF Contact:Meritxell Relaño Title:Country Representative . Email:mrelano@unicef.org . . VI. For more information contact: . The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20433 Telephone: (202) 473-1000 Web: http://www.worldbank.org/projects VII. Approval Task Team Leader(s): Name:Afrah Alawi Al-Ahmadi Approved By: PHNonTransf Safeguards Advisor: Name: Nina Chee (SA) Date: 04-May-2017 Practice Manager/Manager: Name: Hana Brixi (PMGR) Date: 04-May-2017 Country Director: Name:Poonam Gupta (CD) Date:04-May-2017