This alert has been prepared as a complement to the indicative humanitarian needs and requirements for Ethiopia presented in the 2018 Global Humanitarian Overview.
In advance of the finalization of the meher assessment results, it is anticipated that between 5 and 7 million people will be targeted with relief assistance, requiring around $895 million over the course of 2018.
The priorities for immediate financing highlighted in this document are geared towards achieving two purposes:
To ensure that ongoing critical lifesaving response activities can be sustained and scaled-up over the first half of the year in areas of continuing drought and conflict related need – including to avoid projected pipeline breaks during the first six months of the year.
To enable early action and investments at the start of 2018 that will reduce anticipated humanitarian needs and costs for later in the year – including to ensure readiness for new outbreaks of Acute Watery Diarrhea, to mitigate possible deteriorations in food insecurity and acute malnutrition, and to ensure non-functional boreholes are repaired before needs for expensive longdistance water trucking increase.
A full humanitarian plan and appeal for the year will be presented in January / early February 2018, based on the outcome of the meher assessment.
Ethiopia has experienced two years of exceptional drought emergency. In 2017, severe drought conditions continued in lowland, mostly pastoral areas, rendering hundreds of thousands destitute and displaced. The current southern autumn rains are again expected to under-perform, meaning that levels of food insecurity and acute malnutrition in the lowlands are likely to remain high. The well-managed, Government-led, life-saving response will need to be sustained across southern and eastern parts of the country through much of 2018. Across highland areas a strong meher harvest is anticipated, with some pockets of poor performance. Disease outbreaks are expected to continue in 2018. Additional humanitarian needs have arisen due to conflict, with several hundred thousand Ethiopians displaced. Many of those displaced over the course of 2017 are likely to require continuing relief assistance and recovery support in 2018.
As this document is released, a multi-agency, governmentled assessment was just completed, results of which are being compiled to confirm the full scale of humanitarian needs for the first part of 2018. The humanitarian response in 2017 was well-supported with both donor and Government resources: over $1 billion was mobilized to assist 8.5 million people. Similar levels of financial support will be required early in 2018, both to address immediate, priority humanitarian needs, and to protect development gains.
Additionally, efforts are underway between Government, humanitarian and development partners to develop a multiyear framework that will seek to: a) increase the quality and predictable delivery of required multi sectoral humanitarian response; b) mitigate future needs in areas that experience recurrent climate induced shock; c) support the strengthening of national service provision to address chronic and acute needs; and, d) support the recovery of affected communities. This will continue to help identify areas which require longer term solutions.