Regional Office for Central and East Africa
http://ochaonline.un.org/roceaThe Central and East Africa region remains heavily subject to complex emergencies, recurrent and sudden on-set natural disasters and localized cross-border conflicts between communities in Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan. The intertwined set of conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Cameroon and Sudan have dramatically affected the livelihoods and the security of many communities, particularly those along borders. Recurrent droughts, floods and unprecedented increases in food and fuel prices have progressively eroded livelihoods, stretched community coping mechanisms and led to social unrest in Cameroon, Chad, Kenya and Somalia.
Armed conflict, generalized insecurity, scarce resources and climatic shocks, aggravated by climate change, have pushed the number of internally displaced persons and refugees to an estimated ten million in the region. Fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has displaced hundreds of thousands. The lack of protection of civilians, as reflected in the increasing and widespread gender-based violence, including sexual violence, remains a major challenge. The humanitarian space continues to shrink in most crisis-affected central and east African countries for a variety of reasons including on-going conflict and politically imposed constraints. Recurrent attacks on humanitarian workers and assets threaten operations and access in Somalia, the DRC, Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.
The Regional Office for Central and East Africa (ROCEA) will contribute to addressing these issues in 2009 as chair of the Regional Humanitarian Partnership Team, which provides guidance to regional thematic working groups. ROCEA will also support the establishment of a regional protection working group.
ROCEA will give high priority to sustained engagement with key organizations, donor and diplomatic communities, including the media, to highlight critical humanitarian challenges and advocate for increased access to affected populations and the need to address the root causes of humanitarian crises. This will be accomplished by publishing regular updates on regional humanitarian funding, pastoralist issues and displacement of populations. ROCEA will also engage in regional information exchange meetings and public outreach.
A multi-sectoral tool to consolidate core information for humanitarian decision-makers will be developed and piloted in three countries and ROCEA will support countries with inter-agency contingency planning processes to address avian and human influenza in their preparedness strategy. Partnerships will be strengthened with subregional entities including the Regional Disaster Management Centre of Excellence, the Regional Enhanced Livelihoods in Pastoral Areas and on a continental level with the African Union.
ROCEA will continue to engage and provide support to the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development to further strengthen the area of emergency preparedness and contingency planning through multi-hazard contingency planning and simulations. Training and support in these areas will be provided to countries without permanent OCHA presence that are susceptible to humanitarian emergencies, including Djibouti and Cameroon, as well as to countries with OCHA field offices: Ethiopia, Somalia, DRC, Chad, CAR and Sudan/Darfur. As part of these preparedness measures, ROCEA will continue to work with governments and partners to update and make available key datasets for the region to enable more efficient information management during emergency response.
Key Objectives, Outputs and Indicators
