UNICEF Ethiopia: 2000 emergency appeal

$7.7 million sought for conflict- and disaster-affected
ADDIS ABABA, 26 January 2000 (UNICEF)

UNICEF is seeking a total of $7,719,900 for the emergency needs of Ethiopian women and children affected by conflict and natural disaster in 2000 (see table below). This includes $2,976,800 for internally displaced populations in Tigray and Afar regions, and $4,743,100 for drought affected populations throughout Ethiopia.

Last year, UNICEF delivered almost $2.5 million in emergency assistance for displaced, drought and flood affected populations in Ethiopia through donor contributions and internal reallocations. Intervention areas included support to child immunization, nutrition surveillance and monitoring, repair of water points, construction of community latrines, construction of temporary classrooms and provision of learning materials, distribution of blankets and plastic sheeting, support to land mine awareness education and treatment and counseling for traumatized mothers and separated children. Early in the year, UNICEF's emergency programme focus was on displaced populations in Tigray and Afar. However, this was significantly expanded following assessments to drought-affected areas in central and southern Ethiopia in June and the ensuing UN Country Team Drought Appeal, in July 1999.

At the present, the tenuous conditions of an estimated 349,000 internally displaced persons remains a major concern with wide-scale dependency on relief assistance, exposure to the elements and major disruptions of traditional family life creating both serious basic service needs as well as psycho-social stress. The uncertainty of the continuing conflict situation with neighboring Eritrea compels UNICEF and partner agencies to maintain readiness for any deepening of its already stark effects on women and
children.

Across many parts of the country, both drought prone areas of central and northern Ethiopia (overlapping also with the IDPs) and perhaps more severely, in pastoral areas of the south and east, the effects of widespread drought, impacting 7.7 million people, present major emergency challenges primarily in meeting minimal drinking water requirements for humans and livestock. In places like Gode zone of Somali region, severe drought has already prompted over 2,000 people to migrate into Gode town, cattle and sheep losses are estimated as well over 60% and increasing. Measles and severe diarrhea have occurred in Borena zone, southern Oromiya with attendant child death. As livestock are the principal source of nutrition and economic livelihood, UNICEF and aid agencies are in a race against time to assist in water tankering, expansion and rehabilitation of existing water points and support to basic health and nutrition. Other drought affected areas such as Konso in North Omo, Wag Hamra and North Wollo zones, have seen some of the most widespread levels of malnutrition in five years or more.

In furthering successful interventions to sustain and support child attendance in schools in Tigray and Afar, where 44,000 displaced children are benefiting from UNICEF support, focus will be expanded to drought affected areas of the country including southern and eastern Ethiopia, to reverse the increasing drop out rates through interventions complementing an expanded WFP emergency school feeding programme targeting over 140,000 children.

Working with the UN Ethiopia Country Team, government ministries and bureau counterparts at regional and sub-regional levels, and both local and international NGOs, UNICEF seeks to provide appropriate and timely assistance to populations reeling from the present emergency conditions. In that these come on top of what is already a distressing developmental context in the country, where basic indicators point to widespread poverty and high, often chronic vulnerability of women and children even in 'good' food production years, UNICEF will require the strongest possible level of donor support to meet these challenges.

Total UNICEF budgets (includes direct support costs)