Social Welfare Fund (SWF)

1996 to 2015

In 2013, 1.5 million families and over 8 million individuals; 35 per cent of the population lived in a household with at least one beneficiary, of which: 2.6 per cent with a permanent full disability; 7.6 per cent with a permanent partial disability; 0.4 per cent with a temporary full/partial disability; 3.8 per cent orphans; 34.6 per cent elderly; 23.5 per cent women without a breadwinner; 27.6 per cent unemployed 4.25 million children under 18 years (57 per cent of the individuals within SWF beneficiary households); 7,235 orphans in 2013 ; in 2012: 389,024 child beneficiaries and 47,538 orphans

SWF budget for social assistance in 2014: USD287.6 million. Source of funding: Since its inception in 1996, the cash transfer programme has been funded by the Government of Yemen, with partial financial support from the World Bank, the European Union and the USA

Nationwide

The SWF targets mostly socially and economically vulnerable social groups. Social groups: people with disabilities (full and permanent; partial and permanent; full or partial and temporary; the common condition is that the person is unable to work either permanently or temporarily due to disability or chronic illness; those with a partial permanent disability, for instance, include those suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, tuberculosis, heart disease, kidney failure, rheumatism, cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, anaemia and several psychological disorders); orphans (under 18 years old whose parents are either dead or who have disappeared; also for those aged 18–25 years if they are enrolled in college or technical education); elderly people (above age 55 for women and 60 for men). Economic groups: women without a breadwinner in the household (single, widowed or divorced women not remarried) whose breadwinner is absent for any reason and does not support them; they need to be above age 18, unless they are widowed or divorced with at least one child; unemployed (a man who does not have a public or private job and/or whose income/earnings are below the level of the SWF cash assistance; the potential beneficiaries must be between 18 and 60 years old).

Eligible applicants: (i) the individual or his/her family has no source of income (either from property, business or work) that might compensate for the lack of government assistance; (ii) the individual or his/her family has no relative legally obliged to support him/her financially and (iii) individual is in one of the categorical target groups

After the 2008 Comprehensive Social Survey (CSS), individuals meeting the economic criteria should have their information updated in the CSS database every two years, while individuals meeting the social criteria should have their information updated in the database every five years.

Cash

The amount varied between YER3,000 and YER6,000 per household depending on household size: one person YER3,000; two people YER3,600; three people YER4,200; four people YER4,800; five people YER5,400; more than five people YER6,000; the average amount paid per family was YER5,000; the World Bank Additional Financing Project (AF2) maintains the average amount of YER5,000

Quarterly

Delivered through post offices and cashiers, and a smaller number through banks

Individuals within a poor household meeting the programme criteria

In principle, before 2015, SWF benefits should last for two years for beneficiaries who met the economic criteria, and for five years for beneficiaries who met the social criteria (or the period defined at enrolment)

In 2012, the Yemen National Social Protection Monitoring Survey was designed as a tool to regularly monitor living conditions and information on how poor and vulnerable populations are coping in Yemen, to produce evidence on the impact of the SWF cash transfer programme and inform improvements in future social protection efforts and programme targeting; impact estimates were generated by the IPC-IG.

Established by Presidential Law no. 31 of 1996; To underpin necessary SWF reforms, in 2008 the Government of Yemen drafted a new Law on Social Welfare.

SWF monitoring and information system