IGAD Urges Members Countries to Intensify Humanitarian Interventions, Rethink Resilience Investment

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Addis Ababa July 22/2022/ENA/ The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has urged member countries and partners to find ways and means to intensify humanitarian interventions and rethink the scale of resilience investment in the coming years to curb the persistent food insecurity in the region.

IGAD Planning Coordination and Partnership Director, Awira Anthony made the remark in his keynote address at the 14th Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Drought Disaster Resilience Initiative (IDDRSI) held under the theme “consolidating the path for resilience and sustainability: scaling up humanitarian actions and resilience investments.”

Anthony said that the meeting is taking place at a unique time in history when the region was unfortunately hit by the worst food insecurity that affected about 50 million people.

He added that the key issue should be on scaling up the humanitarian interventions to curb the persistent food insecurity and rethinking the investment for resilience for better preparedness for the next drought.

Investment areas that will help us to avoid the return of the catastrophic food insecurity we are dealing with include, Anthony stated:

“Water-based developments to minimize our dependency on rainfall, building capacities of member state institutions, specifically in the area of early warning and anticipatory actions, which are highly desired in our region where 70 percent of the landmass is under arid and semi-arid lands.  Peace building at local and national levels, building data and data sharing capacity at the national and the regional levels,” he elaborated.

Agriculture State Minister, Fikru Regassa said the climate change-based incidents like drought, desert locust invasion, flooding and other hazards have severely affected the people of Ethiopia, more notably living in the dry lands areas of the country.

“The government of Ethiopia, through its relentless effort and implementation of resilient building initiatives, we have achieved a promising result in improving the livelihoods of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities living in the arid and semi-arid lowlands,” he pointed out.

Fikru emphasized that the critical importance of IGAD member states' joint efforts in the resilience building initiatives.

Ethiopia assumed chair of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Drought Disaster Resilience Initiative (IDDRSI) today.

The State Minister underscored that Ethiopia has done a lot in overcoming the effects of drought.

Ethiopian News Agency
2023