GLIDE n° OT-2008-000196- DJI/ERI/ETH/KEN/SOM
Period covered by this Operations Update: 8 May 2009 to 25 October 2009;
Appeal target (current): The appeal target for 2009 is CHF 75,760,326 (USD 66,586,679 or EUR 50,213,969) following an appeal revision on 23 June.
Appeal coverage: 12%
Appeal history:
- This Emergency Appeal was initially launched on 11 December 2008 for CHF 113,992,868 (USD 95.4m or EUR 72.8m) months to assist 2.2 million beneficiaries over a period of five years.
- CHF 130,000 was allocated from the International Federation's Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the assessment activities and mission.
- An exceptional advance of CHF 10 million was extended from the International Federation to support the National Societies of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia to respond to food crisis.
- A revised emergency appeal was launched on 23 June 2009 in which the initial appeal target of CHF 113,992,868 (USD 95.4m or EUR 72.8m) was revised downwards to CHF 75,760,326. The appeal was revised and scaled down as there was, by then insufficient time left to purchase and distribute more food before the Belg harvest would be available in the local markets. The appeal revision did not in any way reflect a decrease in the needs of the affected population but merely the International Federation's concern not to demoralize local farmers or markets.
Summary: Food security conditions have generally remained problematic in the Horn of Africa. As reported in Operations Update no. 2, in Kenya the major rains, due in April were late and unsatisfactory and have resulted in a nearly 25 percent lower than normal (based on the four-year average) long-rains maize harvest.
A weak Belg harvest in Ethiopia resulted in the Government declaring a significant increase in the number of individuals that are in need of emergency food assistance, from 4.9 million individuals at the beginning of 2009 to 6.2 million by the end of the year.
None of the fundamentals have changed in Somalia. Inflation remains high and unrest continues to severely limit the country's food production capacity and to sustain severe market disruption. The humanitarian community's capacity to respond to the massive needs of the population remains almost insignificant as a result of the prevailing security conditions.
While the relative normalization of cereals' prices in international markets since the beginning of the year benefits all countries of the Horn of Africa (HoA) and especially eases the pressure on Djibouti which is fundamentally dependant on the import of all of its cereals, the price of food remains approximately still 30 percent above average.
Lower prices have, nevertheless, improved access to sufficient volumes of food for most but with a marked exception for a significant part of the pastoralists in the rural areas and most of the pastoralist drop-outs in the informal settlements at the outskirts of Djibouti City who have suffered the loss of their income base due to repeated episodes of high rates of animal mortality following a multi-year drought. They will remain critically vulnerable until a sustained effort to facilitate their recovery will have been made and, for the record, such an effort has not yet started in earnest.
The current arrival of the produce of the latest harvests, roughly from October to the end of the year, will generally improve the food-security conditions for the next few months but the effect is expected to be shortlived as this year's food production deficit is major in Kenya and similarly feared to be in Ethiopia where the Meher rains were late and unsatisfactory to date. This follows already very weak short-rains (Kenya) and Belg harvests (Ethiopia) which resulted in a particularly severe hunger season in these countries. Already in Kenya, dramatic deterioration of food-security conditions should be expected from April 2010 onwards as a result of the very significant long-rains maize production deficit (25 percent as compared to the four-year average).
The generous support from a number of institutions and Red Cross donors indicated in the donor response list has not changed the overall modest result of this appeal. While the International Federation appreciates the massive and continued effort from many donors to this complex food-security crisis, given not only in support of its operation in the Horn of Africa but also and far more significantly to the remarkable food-aid efforts from the Governments involved and from World Food Programme (WFP), it is saddened by the fact this truly life saving effort is not matched by an equally important investment in recovery of the affected and longer term risk reduction effort. While severe hunger and chronic-to-severe malnutrition of millions of people in the Horn of Africa really forms an acute crisis for the affected that fully warrants a massive emergency response from the international community, one must keep in mind that these acute episodes are actually just the culmination of a far more fundamental, chronic food-insecurity crisis that needs attention and a response in its own right.
The International Federation has, therefore, decided to phase out its current, ambitious, 5-years integrated appeal which sought to mobilize resources in support to food-aid and to recovery and risk-reduction efforts in a holistic way. While the International Federation remains convinced that such an integrated approach is sound from a conceptual and planning point of view it has turned out to be complicating a possible response from a number of donors. Instead, we will now more clearly distinguish between the resource mobilisation efforts in support to short term emergency actions using the standard 'Emergency Appeal' format and those in support to mid- to longer term recovery and risk-reduction efforts using tools and formats that will be developed soon.
As a result, the actual emergency appeal MDR64003 will no longer accept contributions after the end of the year and will fully phase out by 1 May 2010 when the implementation of the last part of its emergency interventions, supported by European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) in Ethiopia will have ended.
