The thirty-nine members of the Friends of Yemen (FoY) met at the end of April in London for the seventh time in four years. The meeting was not about giving more money to Yemen – there’s still $5.1bn of the pledged $8bn to hand out. Instead, it was about how we – the Government of Yemen and the international community together – deliver implementation on the ground.
We hear the word implementation from politicians, diplomats, NGOs, civil society organisations and the media all the time, but what does it actually mean?
Implementation describes the process whereby an idea, or a policy, moves from the paper it was written on to become a reality. The Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative and the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) outcomes have set the vision for Yemen: a vision of a united Yemen, grounded in democratic principles, based on the rule of law and human rights with economic opportunities for people to improve their lives.
It’s fair to say that implementation in Yemen will be difficult, but by no means impossible if the right structures and people are in place. So what is the recipe for successful implementation of the NDC outcomes? A number of key ingredients are needed:
Firstly, the vision needs to be transformed into a series of bite-size objectives. Responsibility for delivering these objectives should belong to different implementing organisations – like government ministries and agencies, or civil society organisations. The international community must also support – which is where the new Friends of Yemen Working Groups come in.
These organisations (especially the ministries) should then turn these objectives into tangible programmes and projects, and then put them together into a single plan for the ministry. Management Boards should then be created to ensure the ministry implements the programmes it’s signed up to do. Funding needs to be prioritised and allocated between and within ministries in accordance with what they can deliver over what timescale.
The second ingredient is recruiting skilled people to deliver the programmes and projects. The Yemeni Civil Service (the people that work in the ministries) need good strategic awareness, strong project management skills, as well as being dedicated and hard-working. For example, the broad plan to implement the minimum age for Child Marriage could go something along the lines of: the Ministry for Human Rights creates a team to draft the new law; at the same time the ministry collaborates with the Ministries for Health and Finance to create a team to design and deliver a nationwide campaign – using say TV, digital, print and radio – to raise awareness of the social, health and economic benefits the law would bring. Once the law is passed by parliament, the police and the courts could then be tasked with making sure people stick to it.
The third ingredient is assurance, in the form of groups tasked with monitoring ministries’ and other organisations’ progress on delivering their programmes. These groups could be internal or external to the government and provide regular updates to the president, the public, and international community on progress. For external actors – responsible media, civil society and the international community also have roles to play here.
So does Yemen have all the ingredients it needs? It has at least some: the GCC initiative and NDC outcomes set the vision; the constitutional and electoral reform bodies have work plans in place and steady progress is being made; and the new FoY structure brings skills and assurance.
But some ingredients are still missing, such as coordinated programme and project plans for ministries and the FoY Working Groups, and a Yemeni Civil Service with the right skills across the board. If Yemen is to successfully implement the NDC outcomes and improve peoples’ lives, these missing ingredients need to be thrown into the mixing bowl sooner rather than later.