Ethiopia - Situation Report, 7 Jul 2023

HIGHLIGHTS

• Support to agriculture production in return areas, and elsewhere, key to reduce food gaps and improve selfreliance;

• Support to 54,600 displaced people ongoing in their return areas in Gulo Makeda, Tigray, but response not meeting scale of needs;

• Trend of admissions of children with severe acute malnutrition with medical complication shows a worrisome increase in Afar;

• Over 350,000 people affected by malaria in Afar,
  Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s regions; scale up of response required for control;

• Cholera outbreak spreads across 74 woredas in Oromia, Somali, Sidama and SNNP; Outbreak ongoing for close to a year.

Situation Overview

Humanitarian partners in Ethiopia as well as Government counterparts have put various efforts into tackling humanitarian aid misuse. In fact, the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) has established a specific task force to work on the entire humanitarian programme cycle, from identification of beneficiaries to assessment of needs, targeting and monitoring. The task force is representative of the whole humanitarian community including partners and donors. In parallel, humanitarian partners are in close contact with Federal and Regional Government counterparts to put in place strengthened measures to make sure that aid reaches those it is intended for and that beneficiaries do use it to cover their needs, by reinforcing the accountability to affected people.

Humanitarian partners are also very closely following up the situation of the most vulnerable people and investigating allegations of risks to life as they arise. By strengthening the way humanitarian aid is implemented, humanitarian partners and beneficiaries are hopeful that aid will resume soonest across the country.

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), targets more than 20 million people for life saving assistance and protection services. It remains significantly underfunded at only 24.5 per cent.

Northern Ethiopia

With limited resources, humanitarian partners are supporting areas of IDP returns in the Tigray Region. More than a reported 54,600 people who returned to Gulo Mekeda Woreda in the Eastern Zone have received emergency shelter and non-food item (ESNFI) assistance, services in health, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), as well as with agricultural seeds to support farmers in the current planting season, as of 22 June. This limited support, however, requires scale-up in resource mobilization to address the scale of needs across areas of return. In the North Western (NW) Zone, cash assistance to more than 700 households (HHs) comprising of IDPs and host communities were provided to alleviate their plight during the ongoing food pause, and 1,500 IDP HHs in Maekel Adiabo Woredareceived non-food item (NFI) assistance such as with blankets, floor mats, tarpaulins and kitchenware. Overall, ESNFI assistance to Tigray faces low ongoing activities due to lack of ESNFI items in stock, and amid only 28 per cent funding secured of the US$144.2million requirements under the 2023 HRP.

Meanwhile, community-based and faith-based organizations have continued to mobilize resources to conduct one-off, smallscale food distribution targeting a few thousand most vulnerable families within the communities in several locations. More than 2,000 IDP women and girls, as well as 500 refugees in Sheraro Woreda were also provided with dignity kits. Health and WASH response gaps are, however reported in Central Zone due to access constraints or phasing out of partner projects.