22 July 2009: The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, has allocated some $6 million to boost emergency programmes in Ethiopia.
The CERF funds will be apportioned by the United Nations Resident Coordinator to priority life-saving programmes. The CERF funds allocated for Ethiopia are part of some $55 million in allocations made by the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator through a process to support underfunded programmes in emergency situations around the world. A total of $75 million was allocated to fourteen countries in this year’s first underfunded round, which took place in February. The biannual allocations are based on a combination of urgency of humanitarian needs, combined with an analysis of the funding levels for humanitarian programmes.
This is the second time this year that humanitarian organizations in Ethiopia have received funding from CERF’s underfunded window. So far this year, Ethiopia has received some $15.7 million in CERF funding. Humnaitarian organizations in Ethiopia are the fourth-largest recipient of CERF funding since the Fund was established in 2006 to help agencies respond rapidly to new or deteriorating humanitarian situations. Some 69 countries have now benefited from CERF funding.
27 April 2009: Food security situation in most parts of Ethiopia has deteriorated due to the poor performance of the belg and meher seasons, increase of food prices, low demand for agricultural labour, reduction of livestock prices and deteriorating physical condition of livestock. Water and pasture shortages continue to be serious problems in many areas, particularly during the first two months of the dry season.
One of the groups that are most vulnerable to food insecurity is refugees. Ethiopia currently hosts about 86,000 refugees, most of who have fled from the neighbouring countries of Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. The overall number of refugees has increased during the past year due to a continuous influx of Eritreans and Somalis.
This funding of $10 million from CERF first-round underfunded emergency window was allocated to avoid pipeline breaks in the provision of emergency food aid for 5 million drought and conflict affected people and refugees, and in the provision of supplementary feeding for 2.5 million children and 250,000 pregnant and lactating women found to be acutely malnourished.
Support to the agriculture sector assisted the recovery of 462,000 households, suffering from a severely depleted asset base following the widespread food insecurity of 2008.