Response Plan Overview
PEOPLE IN NEED
7.7M
PEOPLE TARGETED
5.5M
REQUIREMENTS (US$)
$1.46B
OPERATIONAL PARTNERS
272
SO 1
Reduce loss of life for 5 million of the most severely vulnerable people, including 1 million children under 5, by decreasing the prevalence of hunger, acute malnutrition, public health threats and outbreaks, and abuse, violence, and exposure to explosive ordinances by the end of 2022
SO 2
Sustain the lives of 5.5 million people requiring humanitarian assistance, including 3.9 million non-IDPs, 1.6 million IDPs and people with disability across 74 districts, by ensuring safe, equitable and dignified access to livelihoods and essential services by the end of 2022
SO 3
Uphold commitments to the centrality of protection across the humanitarian response through protection mainstreaming, accountability to affected populations and monitoring of the protection environment
The 2022 Somalia Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) requires US$1.46 billion to reach 5.5 million people across all 74 districts of the country. The HRP is based on the robust inter-sectoral analysis of the 2022 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), which identified 7.7 million people, including refugees and asylum seekers, in need of humanitarian assistance in the country. This constitutes a 1.8 million person increase from the 5.9 million people in need (PiN) identified in the 2021 HRP.
The highly focused and prioritized humanitarian response will be driven by the three Strategic Objectives outlined above, with the Centrality of Protection at its core – as embodied in Strategic Objective 3. The HRP outlines how protection mainstreaming, localization, gender equality, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) are integrated into specific cluster plans and will be strengthened across the response.
To ensure that the immediate lifesaving needs of affected populations are met in response to drought, conflict, and flooding, the 2022 HRP has integrated the Emergency Response and Preparedness (ERP) framework. The ERP outlines detailed State-level response and preparedness contingency plans to operationalize and optimize the speed and volume of critical assistance delivered immediately after the trigger of three identified slow-onset or sudden-onset shocks: drought, conflict, or flooding. The HRP 2022 also incorporates the planned response to the extreme drought impacting the lives of millions of Somalis at the time of publishing in December 2021 (see ‘Drought Response Plan’ Annex).
In support of the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, the HRP is aligned with relevant resilience and durable solutions frameworks, with the aim to reduce humanitarian needs, risks, and vulnerabilities in the medium to longer term whilst building synergies and complementarities with development, early recovery, and resilience initiatives.
The 2022 HRP will also prioritize the development of an improved response monitoring framework that provides the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) with regular evidence to ensure a timely, efficient, and fit-for-purpose response to the humanitarian needs.
Crisis Context and Impact
Decades of conflict, recurrent climatic shocks, disease outbreaks, large-scale evictions, desert locusts, and increasing poverty, are devastating the people of Somalia. The overall number of people in need has increased over the last three years from 5.2 million people in 2020 to 5.9 million in 2021 and 7.7 million in 2022.
Somalia remains on the frontline of climate change and is the most severely drought-affected country in the Horn of Africa. The cumulative effects of the three consecutive below-average rainy seasons have resulted in a sharp forecasted increase in WASH, food, and health needs, especially in rural areas. The drought emergency, declared on 23 November, has affected at least 3.2 million people in 90 per cent of the country’s districts and displaced some 169,000 people. Without a scale up of humanitarian assistance, some 3.8 million Somalis are estimated to face acute food insecurity through January, rising to 4.6 million people by May.
Critically, climate change is also increasingly understood as a major driver of conflict in Somalia as the struggle for dwindling resources exacerbates clan divisions and inter-clan conflict. Climate change disrupts rural livelihoods, resulting in rapid urbanization which in turn contributes to high rates of forced evictions. These evictions are among the most severe and prevalent protection threats in Somalia, representing both a cause and a multiplier of the internal displacement crisis.
Throughout 2021, the country saw heightened political tensions in the context of a delayed electoral process, as well as a continued military offensive against Al-Shabaab (AS) in central and southern Somalia. The resulting conflict and insecurity were the main driver of internal displacement in 2021, forcing almost 540,000 people to flee their homes by October 2021. In 2022, the conflict in Ethiopia is expected have grave regional security implications that could further threaten prospects for peace and stability in Somalia. In total, 2.9 million people are estimated to be internally displaced throughout Somalia, one of the highest numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the world.
The combined impact of these recurring stress factors has deepened and widened poverty in Somalia, particularly in rural areas and areas where access remains a challenge, with an estimated 71 per cent of the population living below the poverty line. Amidst chronic crises, Somalia also continues to exhibit some of the highest infant and child mortality, maternal mortality, and fertility rates in the world. COVID-19 has exacerbated these dynamics, with up to 20 per cent of Somalia’s population (3.5 million people) expected to suffer from direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic.
Disclaimer
- UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
- To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.