Ethiopia - OCHANet

145. The apparent lack of trust between government and its NGO partners in particular is a significant
impediment to the national response system. The federal government criticises NGO fundraising
methods and their overhead costs (including their perceived reliance on expatriate employees)
and is slow to approve the start up of new programmes. NGOs in turn are reluctant to take risks or to
proceed without all the necessary permissions. This results in criticism of the NGOs for slow response.
146. NGOs constitute, together with the big UN agencies such as WFP and UNICEF, a significant
resource for the government in implementing their development agenda, and in providing
capacity to respond fast to disasters. A more creative solution needs to be found by the Ethiopian
Government if it wishes to properly use this resource. A pre-qualification process, similar to that
used by ECHO and USAID and being put in place currently by DFID, might be one solution.
This would allow the best performing NGOs to respond ahead of official declarations – perhaps
even obliging pre-qualified partners to go to new areas as required, and might also allow for
Innovative pre-financing type arrangements to be put in place.
147. Information sharing is also a significant barrier to response and to partnership. While there
is ample information available from a multitude of sources within the country, the federal government
is reluctant to disseminate it widely, often for historical and cultural reasons. This breeds
a similar reluctance on the part of partners. The failure to agree on data for dissemination
is a significant brake on effective and early action.
148. Whilst the general response coordination system is well evolved, if complex and sometimes
overly bureaucratic, the refugee coordination approach in Ethiopia has clear faults. As already highlighted
above the care and maintenance partnership between the UNHCR and ARRA is effective
and well-tested. That for a major refugee response has weaknesses, unclear divisions of labour
and accountability and is in need of an early review if the resources available to the Government
of Ethiopia and UNHCR are to be maximised.
149. Although the international system for non-refugee coordination has evolved since 2005 such
that other agencies are familiar with the “new rules” of cluster, this was not the case for this acute
refugee emergency. Eventually an “accountability matrix” was developed, allocating roles to agencies
by sector and by camp, but arguably valuable time was lost in this exercise. One clear lesson
from Dolo Ado is that UNHCR now has to refine its global agreements with UNICEF and some of the
main NGOs so that it can rapidly mobilise additional capacity.
Conclusions
1. Coordination of humanitarian activities in Ethiopia is highly evolved, meaning the cluster
system has not established itself in the way it has in other contexts.
2. The introduction of a new Disaster Risk Management Policy – in process since 2009 – has
meant that the ‘system’ is in partial limbo. Decentralisation is already happening de facto,
but without all of the structures and powers envisaged in the new DRM policy.
3. The introduction of the strategic and technical multi-agency coordination groups
was a worth while innovation and should be continued.
4. The Humanitarian Coordination function, assisted by OCHA and OCHA field presence, plays
44