The government of Ethiopia through its Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) announced in January 2003, that the number of beneficiaries for food assistance had increased from 10.2 million people to 11.3 million, with 3 million under close monitoring. This new figure came from the findings of a multi-agency food need assessment report of November/December 2002. The increased number of needy people also raised the country food aid requirement to 1.46 million tones. Rations had to be reduced to 12.5 kg/person/month because the number of needy people exceeded the available resources. Due to this reduced ration, there were pockets of extensive hardship in the country with cases of severe malnutrition, which induced mortality.

In April, 2003 a reassessment of the food situation by eight multi-agency teams in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and SNNPA reported great deterioration of the situation which manifested itself in the form of:-

• Increased level of distress migration in search of food and labour.
• Dilution of food ration at household level
• Increased number of school drop-outs
• Increased level of social disruption including begging and theft.

Nutritional surveys were also conducted by different agencies including ACT members, identifying acute malnutrition in different parts of the country. An alarming level of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) was reported in Afar, Tigray, Oromia by the Special Early Warning Report and update on current food situation DPPC – April 2003. Taking into account all the findings of the assessments and re-assessment reports of January and April 2003, DPPC revised the number of needy people, period of intervention and quantity of food or resources required up to the end of December 2003.

In view of the above, Lutheran World Federation, Ethiopia Program has revised its food emergency programs reflecting the increased food needs in their operational areas. They have also requested the implementation period to run up to the 31 December 2003.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church – Development & Inter Church Aid Commission (EOC-DICAC)

has also revised its proposal because of its inability to carry out the proposed projects due to lack of funding.

Please note that this revision only affects the LWF and EOC-DICAC programs in the appeal. Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) program is currently working on a revision of their programs which will be included later in a further revision of this appeal. Other ACT members in the appeal have not revised their programs and therefore remain as presented in the original appeal document of 21 November 2002 although they have all agreed that the completion date of the appeal will now be December, 2003.

We should also mention that the income (appeal coverage) reflected in this appeal may not be correct as some of the implementing members have not been able to provide figures of the value of the food they have received and distributed. Efforts are being made by the ACT CO to get accurate figures of appeal coverage from all the implementing members.

Project Completion Date:

31 December, 2003

* Please note that the contributions included in the ACT Food Items correspond to those received by LWF and EOC/DICAC. The ACT CO has received no information about the contributions received by the other ACT members in the appeal.

Signed by:

John Nduna, Acting Director, ACT International

For full details of proposals and budgets, please click below to download a PDF file of the entire Appeal.

Ethiopia - Assistance to Drought affected, REVISION 1 - AFET22 (file size: 103 Kb)

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