Humanitarian Emergency Affairs

Ethiopia faces multiple humanitarian crises driven by conflict, climate shocks, and economic challenges. Ongoing drought has severely impacted food security, leaving millions in need of urgent assistance. Conflict and displacement have disrupted livelihoods with internally displaced persons requiring critical support. Floods and landslides have further exacerbated vulnerabilities, damaging infrastructure and limiting access to essential services.

The Humanitarian Emergency Affairs (HEA) department is leading humanitarian responses across 10 regions in Ethiopia, addressing the needs of the most vulnerable children and communities. Through emergency interventions in WASH, health, nutrition, education, protection, and shelter, HEA operates across the disaster management cycle, from early warning to recovery.

HEA is managing several emergency responses, including the Sustained Humanitarian Response, Global Hunger Response, Sudan Crisis and Migration Emergency Response, Ethiopia Earthquake Response and Ethiopia Amhara Polycrisis. These efforts have been supported by a dedicated humanitarian workforce, ensuring that communities receive life-saving assistance.

To strengthen Disaster Risk Reduction efforts, HEA designs and shares key activities to strategically integrate DRR and Community-Based Disaster Risk Management into new and existing programs. This includes incorporating crisis response measures into annual planning and ensuring budget allocation for emergency preparedness. Additionally, to improve emergency response capacity and ensure that humanitarian actions align with globally and nationally accepted standards, principles, and guidelines, capacity-building trainings are provided to staff from emergency response projects and development programs. Trainings also focus on Disaster Risk Reduction, Anticipatory Action, and Early Warning to enhance staff readiness and response capabilities.

In the year 2024, our emergency response has reached a total of 4,680,228 people of which 2,597,412 are children and 1,209,173 women.