July 18, 2022 (DJIBOUTI, Djibouti): The Executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Dr Workneh Gebeyehu, today inaugurated the 14th Steering Committee Meeting of the IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) in Addis Ababa with in attendance the State Minister of Agriculture of Ethiopia, Dr Fikru Raggasa, and Dr Yassin Osman of USAID Ethiopia for the Global Alliance supporting the Initiative.
The two-day meeting which is paving the way for the 8th IDDRSI Platform General assembly to be held on July 23, will be centred on collecting reports from member countries, IGAD Secretariat and its Specialised Institutions, and implementing partners on the progress made in the implementation of IDDRSI throughout the IGAD region.
The meetings will also be the opportunity to discuss the plans and proposals for future interventions aimed at ending drought emergencies through building resilience and investing in sustainable development.
The IDDRSI Platform meetings will be centred around the theme of Consolidating the Path to Resilience and Sustainability: Scaling up humanitarian actions and resilience investments. This thematic focus is because of the ongoing drought severely affecting the region, where 18 million people are highly food insecure and lost their livestock (for example, 1.5 million in Kenya and 1.77 million in Ethiopia).
Speaking at the opening session, Dr Workneh recalled that in these last 11 years, IGAD had supported “Member States through IDDRSI to develop joint programmes that targeting regional issues through programmes that address development challenges in cross-border areas”. “Our intention is to learn by doing, in order to increase the adaptive capacities of our people to the complex situations they are facing. In this regard, lessons generated from Phase I of IDDRSI have been translated during Phase II, which will subsequently inform Phase III of this initiative”, he added.
The 14th IDDRSI Platform Steering Committee will build the resolutions of the 13th May 2022 ministerial meeting and will focus on the following:
- Review reports on the impacts of the multiple effects of drought, flooding, desert locust invasion and COVID lockdown in the region’s food systems, and other drivers of food insecurity in the region,
- Review reports of the response by both governments and non-state actors and examines the gaps in early action and response,
- Revisiting the decision of IGAD Member States ministerial meeting with development partners on 13 May 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya,
- Provide recommendations on who will do what to respond to the prevailing humanitarian needs,
- Discuss ways to scale-up resilience investments in the region to better prepare communities and countries for anticipatory actions and
- Discuss and agree on dates for the IGAD Head of States Summit on the Region Food Crisis
The platform brings together all stakeholders involved in the drought resilience initiative, including Member States, IGAD Secretariat, Development Partners, UN agencies, Civil Society and specialised research and training institutions. The platform provides the opportunity and mechanism through which the needs and support for the region’s priorities for intervention in the drought resilience initiative can be discussed by affected countries and interested development partners.
The Regional Platform is made up of the IDDRSI Platform General Assembly, which comprises members at the ministerial level and provides overall strategic guidance and makes decisions on investment plans and proposals; the IDDRSI Platform Steering Committee (whose membership includes senior policy officials and national experts), which oversees the implementation of the drought resilience enhancement interventions.
IDDRSI has been supported by the AfDB, the World Bank, KfW, the EU, SIDA/Sweden, USAID, BMZ/GIZ, Islamic Development Bank, Denmark, Swiss Development Cooperation, and UNDP. In addition, IDDRSI has benefitted from the technical support of FAO, ILRI, and GIZ.
