Ethiopia: Food Security DREF – Final Report, Operation n° MDRET026
- SITUATION ANALYSIS
Description of the disaster
The country has faced multiple hazards in sequence in the last two years, due to conflicts, civil unrest, desert locust infestation, floods, and drought, which has contributed to a deterioration in food insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic and locust infestation have further exacerbated the situation.
According to IPC Analysis then Acute Food Insecurity Situation May – June 2021 and Projection for July – September 2021, it was estimated that 5.5 million people are facing acute food insecurity in Tigray and the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara in Ethiopia, with 353,000 people in Catastrophic situation (IPC Phase 5), which was at that moment the highest number of people in this category since the 2011 Somalia famine.
Furthermore. There were 2.1 million people in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), and 3.1 million in Crisis (IPC Phase 3), between May and June 2021.
This situation did not improve as the country was hit by more drought which compromised the food security situation. Moreover, there was an escalation of the Tigray conflict which affected other parts of the country. Specifically, the Ataye region has received huge numbers of displaced populations. This further compromised economic activities as well as household food security capacities as a result of being a host to the displaced population from Northern Ethiopia.
As per the call to all partners on 13th August 2021 to scale up their support across all areas of the country, Ethiopia Red Cross has launched a DREF to initiate a response to the acute hunger crisis, particularly focusing on the situation in the North Shewa zone located in the southern part of Amhara region where the humanitarian situation was of considerable concern. Inter-communal violence in May 2021, resulted in the displacement of more than 250,000 people, and the destruction of livelihoods, agricultural production assets including seeds and fertilizers, and household food reserves. All those tensions, even if reduce have triggered a worsening of the food insecurity situation in the zones.
Conflict effects have escalated in these parts of the country with huge consequences impacting all of the country. Closing the MDRET026 DREF operation with a positive impact in North Shewa, the drought, and food security situation is still alarming in the country. The expected rains in January failed and the forecast predicts that the April -June 2022 showers of rain will also be below average. Currently, the effect is worse in the semi-arid regions including the Somali region and southern Oromia. The IFRC launched in March 2022 an Emergency appeal to cover the large-scale climate and complex setting-induced hunger crisis in Southern Ethiopia, in line with IFRC’s Pan Africa Zero Hunger Initiative.
Source: International Federation of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies