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Food Security and Emergency Unit
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History of Drought and Famine in Ethiopia Ethiopia is a country endowed with a wealth of human and natural resources. Yet it has been plagued by disasters, especially acute food shortages and famine. The population growth is very high and at the same time, people have less capacity and access to poverty reduction mechanisms. Ethiopia and drought have a recorded history since the 9th century. During the sixteenth century and at the beginning of seventeenth century, about six famines had plagued the country. A major famine, which was known as the great famine, was observed throughout the country between the year 1888 and 1892. However, the most notable of all, as measured by the level of disaster, are the 1973/74 and 1984/85 droughts. The 1984/85 famine was a result of a succession of poor rains and poor harvest that began in 1980. In 1979 the Belg (small rain season) and Meher (major rain season) rains were poor in many areas and the pattern continue in 1980 as well in most parts of the country. Traditionally, more is known or written about famines than drought or other causes of famines. But from available records, drought is known to be the major immediate cause of famine in Ethiopia. It is also observed that, the occurrence of drought every year is now an established fact in the drought prone areas. What is not regular is the geographical extent of its coverage and the severity. Some of the researches findings are indicating that the occurrence of drought and its persistence in the drought prone areas will not only continue but will also increase in severity and geographical coverage unless effective measures in environmental rehabilitation and development are taken over a long period of time to reverse the worsening trend of the enhancing factors. From this, it can be noted that drought can persist indefinitely in an area, revisit some places frequently, can affect new areas every year and can also occur successively in the same places. Source: Web, P. et al Famine in Ethiopia: Policy implications of Coping Failure at National and Household levels, 1992. Since the year 2003/2004 in average, more than 5 million acutely food in-secured people were assisted in emergency relief food aid. Number of people affected by food shortage/famine in the past 10 years (in million)
Policy Environment After the 1974 famine, the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) was established by a proclamation to deal with emergencies. The Commission built its logistics and Early Warning capacity and considered other elements of preparedness. But when RRC failed to avert the 1984/85 famine, it became evident that institutionalization of the problem (establishing the RRC) only could not work. The need for the policy and political commitment was emphasized. Since 1993, the Government of Ethiopia has developed a National Disaster Prevention and Management Policy for the first time. The policy defined the objectives, basic principles, preparedness modalities and duties and responsibilities of all stakeholders. In this line, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) was officially established by proclamation in replacing RRC in the year 1995. Different implementation guidelines were also developed. However, the policy itself is highly biased towards slow-onset and drought-induced disaster. Fast onset disasters like flood, earthquake, epidemics, etc. are not addressed in the national policy of 1995. However, in the developed implementation guidelines, institutional arrangements for better emergency response were indicated and duties and responsibilities of main stakeholders were stated. So, it was after this time that the government of Ethiopia started looking for an organized new ways to protect the forte from the effects of disaster. Before the establishment of DPPC in 1995, the National Policy on Disaster Prevention and Management (NPDPM) was declared in 1993. This policy has two main aims, which are: · To prevent disasters, by tackling the root causes of disaster; · To respond to disasters better when they occur. Unlike old programs, the new policy integrates these two components in what is called "linking relief to development". This was different and complex than the previous approaches to emergency and relief. Coordinating effort towards food security and emergency Ethiopian Catholic Church established the food security and emergency coordination unit with the following mandates · develop the "ECC Food Security Guidelines", which provides a general framework and overall direction of the Catholic Church and also guide dioceses in formulating their respective food security proposals under a problem and area centered approach. · Facilitate the development of appropriate disaster preparedness/coping strategies, including early warning system prior to and during emergencies · Improve the technical capacity of the diocesan secretariats by providing and/or facilitating training on disaster management, early warning system and integrated food security · Engage in joint food insecurity assessment with DCSs to establish effective emergency response · In collaboration with the dioceses, prepare and coordinate Rehabilitation and/or Food Security programs/projects. · Organize and facilitate exposure visits for key staff of the diocesan secretariats · Arrange relevant workshops and training in the field of food security and related activities for ECS and Diocesan senior staff · Foster external funding of post emergency and integrated food security projects at diocesan level by establishing and/or consolidating contacts with potential donors, channeling project proposals from dioceses to potential donors Medium and long-term objectives · Conceptualize the "ECC Food Security Guidelines" to the church's traditional and new coming partners for their financial support · Ensure that the ECC Food Security Guidelines is well understood at ECS and DCSs · Enlarge partner/donor platform beyond Caritas Network · Organize and facilitate exposure visits for key staff of diocesan secretariats · Identify capacity gaps, in particular with regard to disaster preparedness and early warning at ECS and diocesan level and render respective training to capacitate the technical staff Highlights of the ECC food security strategy/guidelines · Work towards increasing crop and livestock production and productivity in the church's area of operation through training of male and female farmers and provision of agricultural inputs without creating dependency on aid · ECC will endeavor to increase household food availability through reducing pre-and post-harvest losses · Perceive HIV/AIDS as development issue, ECC will address it in all sectoral development programs including food security program through applying various mainstreaming approaches · Employ all possible gender mainstreaming strategies to incorporate gender issues in all food security interventions to ensure that women have better access to and control over resources and to improve their status within the community · Work towards the empowerment of the local communities within the operational areas through promoting the establishment of community-based organizations (with members from both men and woman) and building their capacities to plan and implement food security interventions · Believe that people are also food insecure as a result of inadequate knowledge, poor hygiene practices, and influence of harmful traditional practices, the issue of food utilization and nutrition will be addressed · Take the comparative advantage and neutrality of the church, ECC will firmly work towards promotion of peace and stability in the country along with other relevant and interested group. Response of the Catholic Church to Emergency Situations During the famine of 1970s and 1980s, ECC in partnership with the other faith based organizations had formed the Joint Relief Partnership (JRP) and played a significant role to reach the needy and save lives of people, particularly in the northern war zone of the country. Since the year 1999/2000, the Ethiopian Catholic Church (ECC) has entered into the emergency interventions in a more organized way by introducing Special Operation Appeals (SOAs). The Caritas members had also supported ECC in raising funds for realization and well-coordinated way of implementing SOA in different parts of the country. The united effort of all Catholic Secretariats to present their appeals in one common approach and appeal through SOAs has been found to be very useful for addressing the existing food insecurity problem in a coordinated way. In this regard, the SOAs have achieved its objectives in saving lives and livelihood of the target community. The implementation of this program also created a fertile ground for the efforts of improving the food security situation of the targeted areas. So far, the Ethiopian Catholic Church emergency interventions have saved millions of lives. The church has allocated hundreds of millions in terms of money and food items and medicaments that have been received from many international agencies. ECC has a long-standing history particularly in emergency interventions. With funds raised from the Caritas Network, ECC has played a great role in saving lives of thousands of drought victims during each occurrence of drought in this country. In general, n ECC used to respond to emergency interventions since the year 1980’s n More coordinated emergency interventions started by the church in 2000 by launching Special Operation Appeal (SOA) 33/2000 (with the main objectives of preventing the escalation of the 2000 drought emergency and improve ECS and diocesan capacity to respond to future emergencies) n Seven SOA interventions (including Post emergency, continuation of SOA 30/2003) have been implemented by the church, over the last nine years (from the year 2000 to 2008)- These SOA are named SOA 33/2000, SOA 17/2001, SOA 51/2002, SOA 30/2003, SOA 28/2005, Post Emergency, EA 17/2008 Major achievements during SOA interventions · Contribution of the emergency interventions to development through employment generation activities · DCSs enhanced their capacity in integrating relief programs with development · Disaster preparedness and respective measures were became more effective in the implementing DCSs and ECS · ECC/ECS Food Security guidelines produced based on the experiences gained during the emergency implementation · Life saving measures achieved · Good experience gained about the techniques of integrating relief with development · Experience accumulated in working with government and other concerned bodies Future Focus of Food Security and Emergency Unit During the years to come, the Food security and emergency unit will focus in enhancing the contribution of the Ethiopian Catholic Church in improving the livelihoods of the poor by implementing food security and emergency relief programs, as part of the overall development endeavors. In this regard, major areas of intervention will be:
Address:
Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat
This page was last updated on 10/10/2009 |
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