Horn of Africa Crisis: 2011-2012
Overview
The Horn of Africa crisis of 2011-2012 affected 13 million people. The main focus of the crisis was across southern Ethiopia, south-central Somalia and northern Kenya. Regional drought came on top of successive bad rains and rising inflation. It ramped up a chronic livelihoods crisis into a tipping point of potential disaster by putting extreme pressure on food prices, livestock survival, and water and food availability. Armed conflict across the region compounded chronic ecological and economic vulnerability, which escalated the crisis and limited people’s survival and recovery choices. (IASC Real-Time Evaluation of the Humanitarian Response to the Horn of Africa Drought Crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya - Synthesis Report)
The famine in Somalia, which was declared by the UN on 20 Jul 2011, had ended by 3 Feb 2012, but many affected populations in the region remain in need of humanitarian assistance.
Appeals & Funding
- Djibouti Appel global 2013
- Ethiopia Humanitarian Requirements 2013
- Kenya Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan 2013
- Somalia Consolidated Appeal 2013-15
Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia
Useful Links
This report provides a summary of the discussions that took place during a half-day reflection workshop in May 2017. More than 40 people from national and international NGOs, the UN, donors and research organisations came together to consider lessons from the 2011 drought response, reflect on the use of cash transfer programming (CTP) in the current response and agree actions to strengthen existing work.
This paper was produced for a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 19-21 January 2017
SUMMARY – KEY MESSAGES
• The failure of the 2016 October-December rains across parts of the Horn of Africa has led to a devastating drought in Somalia, south-eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya. More than 15 million people in these three countries are facing food and water shortages, and famine is now a possibility in Somalia.
Executive Summary
Extreme weather increasingly linked to global warming
The World Meteorological Organization has published a detailed analysis of the global climate 2011-2015 – the hottest five-year period on record - and the increasingly visible human footprint on extreme weather and climate events with dangerous and costly impacts.
The record temperatures were accompanied by rising sea levels and declines in Arctic sea-ice extent, continental glaciers and northern hemisphere snow cover.
Project Description
In many regions of central and northern Tanzania, lives and livelihoods suffer from periodic weather-related stress, particularly from below-normal rainfall. The resulting crop failures and loss of livestock increases economic hardship, forcing thousands of families to skip meals, sell assets, cut back on medical care, or stop attending school. While these strategies help populations live through difficult times, they dampen quality of life and limit opportunities for development.
Le climat mondial 2011-2015: chaud et fantasque
L’Organisation météorologique mondiale (OMM) vient de publier une analyse détaillée du climat mondial de 2011 à 2015 – période quinquennale la plus chaude jamais enregistrée – et de l’empreinte de plus en plus visible de l’être humain sur les phénomènes météorologiques et climatologiques extrêmes, dont les répercussions sont dangereuses et coûteuses.
On Wednesday 19 October 2016, the Rift Valley Forum and the University of Hargeysa’s Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) hosted a public forum to discuss the key findings of the book, Famine in Somalia: Competing Imperatives, Collective Failures, 2011-12. The book, written by Dan Maxwell and Nisar Majid, is based on extensive research on the 2011–2012 drought that affected Somalia and the region.
A variety of natural hazards—including cyclical drought, floods, and environmental degradation—are endemic to the East and Central Africa (ECA) region, where conflict, rapid population growth, and limited government response capacity have compounded humanitarian needs over the last decade. Between FY 2007 and FY 2016, USAID’s Office of U.S.
A large number of people in the Horn of Africa have grown up in the midst of armed conflict. They are never far from violence and danger. The abundance of weapons in the region and the constant influx of new arms play a large role in these conflicts. In the report 'Armed and insecure', PAX provides a unique overview of the manner in which armed conflict and the arms trade reinforce each other.
Every day is a struggle to survive for Rahel, 34, and her family in Sebeya, a village in one of the worst drought-affected areas on the Ethiopian border with Eritrea. Her husband is a soldier and often away. She works as a farm labourer when she can find work to feed herself and her young daughters, Danait and Melat.
“This last year has been the worst ever. I have little or no money coming into the house,” said Rahel. “There has been no rain, no harvest. The ground has remained a desert, offering us nothing.”
Description:
Situation Analysis of Children – A call for action to realize the rights of all Somali children
MOGADISHU, Somalia, 1 August 2016 – UNICEF, together with the Federal Government of Somalia, donors and partners, today launched the Situation Analysis of Children in Somalia 2016.
WASHINGTON, 9 mai 2016 – Alors même qu’un épisode de sécheresse extrême continue de sévir dans la majeure partie de l’Afrique subsaharienne et que des millions de personnes ont besoin d’une aide d’urgence, un nouveau rapport préparé sous la direction de la Banque mondiale examine les interventions qui pourraient accroître durablement la résilience face à la sécheresse.
Mogadishu, 8 May 2016 – A devastating famine forced Halima Abdulkadir Ahmed to abandon her home in Qoryole in 2011. Since then, she and her seven children have been living in a settlement called Rajo, one of the 486 camps and settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs) located in and around Mogadishu.
On 8 May, the United Nations welcomed the Somali government’s initiative to address challenges facing 1.1 million IDPs like Halima through a government-led taskforce that will develop an IDP policy for inclusion in a future national development plan.
Opportunities to Reduce Vulnerability to Drought are Within Reach, Says New Report
Appeal History:
A preliminary emergency appeal was launched on 19 October 2011 for 27,618,017 Swiss franc (plus an estimated 3,050,000 Swiss franc for emergency response units) to assist 60,000 beneficiaries for 12 months.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO’s) cash and voucher programmes benefit smallholder farmers who are particularly vulnerable to natural hazards, market volatility, conflicts and protracted crises.
Cash and vouchers play a critical role in response to crises or shocks when farmers and pastoralists no longer have the ability to purchase food, agricultural inputs or livestock because their assets have been damaged or depleted.
By: Daniel Maxwell, Jeeyon Janet Kim, Nisar Majid
This paper is important reading for anyone working in or on Somalia because it presents the famine of 2011 from the perspective of those who lived through it in their own words. The Somali voices bring critical (but often neglected) insight to the study of the crisis, particularly in todays’ context where the distance between local populations and humanitarian actors is increasing as remote management becomes the new norm.
