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Djibouti + 4 more

Multi-disciplinary assessment mission: Report on the Horn of Africa food crisis

Attachments

  1. Introduction

1.1 Background

In November 2007, the Food Early Warning System (FEWS) NET Food Security Outlook was already indicating a likely scenario of 'extreme food insecurity' for large parts of Ethiopia and Somalia. The warning was repeated on 21 December 2007 by the Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSAU).

These early signals of an imminent food crisis in the Horn of Africa were recognized by the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies of the region and a series of assessments in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti were carried out in April 2008. These were followed by allocations from the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) and/or appeals for Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda, where emergency operations were launched to respond to the increasing needs.

This response was in line with existing Red Cross Red Crescent commitment to food security in the region and across all of Africa. National Societies had made a commitment at the Fifth Pan-African Conference (Ouagadougou, 2000) to focus on food security as a priority and to develop a methodology and expertise in this field. This commitment was confirmed at subsequent conferences in Algiers in 2004 and Johannesburg in 2008.

With the support of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at Geneva and zone levels, African National Societies had developed a five-year initiative to prepare for and address chronic food insecurity. In a first phase, the initiative aimed at scaling up Red Cross Red Crescent involvement in longer-term food security programmes, through a series of pilot projects including micro-projects in community-based agricultural development work, small-scale re-stocking, income generation and health interventions. This involved the National Societies of Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan.

The wider International Federation (including the National Societies of the region, Partner National Societies and the secretariat) has also a well-established experience in responding to major droughts and other disasters that lead to severe food crises in the Horn of Africa from the early 1980s onwards.

The Red Cross Red Crescent intervention however, has now had to be reviewed in the light of the scale and depth of the crisis in the Horn of Africa in order to scale up the response. The current crisis is enormous indeed. According to the UN system, at least 17 million1 persons are immediately affected in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, parts of Kenya and Uganda and possibly Sudan and Eritrea. This is understood to be the largest humanitarian crisis worldwide at present in terms of the number of people affected. The UN estimates that 1.4 billion US dollars is needed to cover the needs in the region and have launched a number of alerts and appeals to international donors.

On 19 September, the UN announced a shortfall of 716 million US dollars. This seriously reduced the planned provision of food, which was vital to combat the alarmingly high levels of global acute malnutrition in large parts of Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia. Malnutrition rates are also of concern in Eritrea and Sudan, although they were not included in the same appeal, due to the lack of solid information on crop production and malnutrition in the case of Eritrea and since part of the needs in Sudan are covered by appeals for Darfur.