Draft Strategy that Improves Lives of Refugees, Host Communities Unveiled

Addis Ababa June 21/2019 The draft National Comprehensive Refugee Response Strategy (NCRRS) will enable to improve the lives of refugees and host communities sustainably, according to Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affair (ARRA).

Addressing the workshop held today to discuss the draft strategy, Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affair Director Kebede Chane said the major goal of the strategy is to ensure the active engagement of refugees and the host communities in the social and economic spheres.  

He added that it also targets to ensure self-reliance and the gradual closing of the shelter-based temporary supports as per the international agreements that the country signed.

The strategy is critical to rehabilitate the areas of host communities in a sustainable manner, and mainly to create opportunity for the host communities to be fairly benefit from proposed projects, he further stated.

The draft strategy details as priorities community-based developmental safety net, life improving and job creation, and human development (education, health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene).

Based on international rules and regulations that the country has already signed and pledged, a proclamation which targets to improve the lives of refugees was approved this year.

Ethiopia currently hosts close to 1 million refugees from some 27 countries, mainly from neighboring countries.