Key Issues
In addition to late and insufficient funding, logistical challenges resulted in late and/or incomplete relief food ration delivery.
A Logistics Cluster will be activated to support the Government of Ethiopia scale-up and handle a colossal increase in humanitarian needs.
UNICEF has finalized the contract with a private sector transport company to deploy an additional 100 trucks. This reduces the water trucking gap to 95. More than 350,000 people are reached, receiving 5 liters per person per day.
So far in 2016, the ES/NFI sector received pledged funding for 56,582 ES/NFI kits, of which funds are committed for 15,600 ES/NFI Kits (28 per cent of pledged funds).
Ethiopia is responding to an El Niño-caused drought emergency: The El Niño global climactic event has wreaked havoc on Ethiopia’s summer rains. This comes on the heels of failed spring rains, and has driven food insecurity, malnutrition and water shortages in affected areas of the country. A well-coordinated response is already underway and expanding rapidly, although the scale of the developing emergency exceeds resources available to date. Given the lead times necessary for the procurement of relief items, the Government and its international partners have called for early action to this slow onset natural disaster.
A Logistics Cluster will be activated to support drought response
With the technical and financial support from humanitarian and donor partners, a Logistics Cluster will be activated to support the Government of Ethiopia scale-up and handle a colossal increase in humanitarian needs.
In addition to significant funding gaps, Ethiopia’s on-going drought response is challenged by inadequate logistical capacity to efficiently manage ever increasing relief commodity fleets and delivery. The system, which so far supported an average of 3 to 4 million relief food beneficiaries every year, is now expected to meet the needs of 10.2 million people. This figure is likely to further increase in the coming month.
The Logistics Cluster is expected to improve the efficiency of the humanitarian response and to ensure a timely delivery of assistance through enhanced planning and coordination; transportation and fleet management; and information management capacity amongst others.
At present, some 80,000 MT of relief food supplies (wheat/sorghum) await berthing or offloading at the Port of Djibouti. Unless the humanitarian cargo is prioritized, JEOP will experience a pipeline break for cereals for round 2 of its distribution. The NDRMC pipeline breaks in March while procurement from local cooperatives and the Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise (EGTE) is underway. WFP faces a full pipeline break in June and in the meantime will continue to fill gaps in NDRMC pipeline (pulse).
WaSH Cluster scales-up the real-time data monitoring system
The WaSH Cluster will establish the real-time data monitoring system in 60 additional woredas, increasing the number of woredas covered to 90. The system initially established in 30 drought-affected woredas using mobile android phones informed decisions on the scale-up of emergency water supply interventions, in particular water trucking and rehabilitation works. Phase 1 monitoring results have shown that 78 per cent of communities in one region use less than 5 liters/person/day while 21 per cent of the population uses 5-15 liters/person/day and the remaining 1 per cent use more than 15 liters/person/day. The results also highlighted geographic coverage and gaps in the on-going response. The Cluster calls on additional NGOs to support the scale-up/phase 2 of the monitoring system. Oxfam and World Vision are the only NGO partners thus far.
Only 3,020 of 16,594 households in need of ES/NFI reached
Of 16,594 displaced households in need for ES/NFI support in January and February, the sector assisted 3,020 households in Oromia with standard/full ES/NFI kits and 1,752 households in Somali, SNNP and Oromia region with partial ES/NFI kits using all available stock. The low coverage is due to the significant funding shortfall the sector faces. So far in 2016, the sector has received pledged funding for 56,582 ES/NFI kits, of which funds are committed for 15,600 ES/NFI Kits (28 per cent of pledged funds). Should funds for the 56,582 ES/NFI kits be fully committed, the sector would be able to cover 34 per cent of the projected 2016 needs. The sector also ensured that dignity and sanitary kits be part of the standard ES/NFI kits, which will be distributed to an estimated 210,000 girls and women of reproductive age in 2016.
Deadline for belg seed funding and planting
As of 23 March, 82,520 households (41.6 per cent of targeted 198,122 households) received belg seeds; while 51,437 households (2.9 per cent of targeted 1.7 million households) received meher seeds. The deadline for belg requirement funding was December/January, and the deadline for belg planting is end of March. For more information, contact: ocha-eth@un.org