Somalilandsun: The onset and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic required Humanitarian Country Teams (HCT) to quickly confront the scope and scale of new and rapidly evolving humanitarian needs.
Key Figures
- People in need: 5.1 M
- Revised PIN: 5.2 M
- People targeted: 2.9 M
- Revised target: 3 M
- Requirements (US$): 1.05 B
- REVISED REQUIREMENTS (US$): $1.01B
The new situation required an analysis of which interventions could no longer be implemented and which should be adapted, suspended, or reprioritized. It also required a review of delivery modalities to comply with social distancing and other containment measures. Recognizing the significant contextual shifts since the finalization of the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), the HCT in Somalia launched a rigorous HRP re-prioritization exercise taking into account several factors impacting the vulnerabilities identified in the original needs assessments published in December 2019: the threat of COVID19, the worst Desert Locust upsurge in decades, and seasonal floods which affected 1.2 million people, including 436,000 people who were displaced.
In response to this “triple threat”, the HCT initiated an HRP revision process in May based on agreed criteria to ensure needs-based, prioritized and credible humanitarian funding requirements. At the time, the HRP was less than 20 per cent funded. This process included COVID related health and non-health interventions; food security and nutrition interventions for areas in IPC3 and above; humanitarian response to the Desert Locust upsurge; and areas affected by flooding after the launch of the original HRP. The impact of COVID-19 movement restrictions and supply constraints, and the operational and financial absorption capacity of humanitarian organisations were also factored in.
To ensure targeted and realistic requirements in the revised HRP, the HCT decided to exclude projects for IPC2 and below, and to delete, reprogram or cut by 50 per cent the budget of projects with no funding to date (and thus unable to be implemented for the full year). The HCT also agreed to suspend or reprogram activities which were no longer feasible due to COVID-19 containment measures, such as training, construction and rehabilitation works, and school feeding.
The UN Country Team undertook a similar process in parallel with the HRP prioritization exercise, maintaining continuous dialogue with the HCT throughout to ensure complementarity of respective activities and programmes. As a result of the prioritization exercise, the financial requirements for most clusters decreased, except for the Health and WASH Clusters.
The budget of Enabling Programmes also increased, as it includes the Logistics Cluster, which was activated in support of the COVID response. The increases are mostly due to new needs and additional priorities generated by COVID-19 and beyond those included in the original HRP. On 26 May, the HCT endorsed the comprehensive reprioritization exercise and the revised HRP financial requirements of $1.01 billion, which is a four per cent decrease compared to the original 2020 HRP ask of $1.05 billion.
This is approximately 19 per cent less than the $1.25 billion requirements published in the GHRP May update and in the GHO Monthly Update. The decreased financial requirements do not reflect an improved humanitarian situation – $1.01 billion is the funding that is required for a refocused and prioritized humanitarian response that takes into account the original needs identified in the 2020 HRP launched in January, as well as the new challenges and constraints related to the triple threat of COVID, locusts and flooding. Although the HRP is currently 41 per cent funded (as of 19 June), aside from the Food Security Cluster, which is 76 per cent funded, almost all other clusters are less than 20 per cent funded. Additional funding is urgently required to continue to deliver prioritized humanitarian assistance in one of the most complex, protracted humanitarian crises in the world.
- UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
- To learn more about OCHA’s activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.
