ReliefWeb

Summary

Mozambique is experiencing its most severe drought in more than 30 years. The drought is affecting approximately 1.5 million people in seven provinces in the Southern and Central regions of the country. Due to the seriousness of the situation, the Government extended the institutional red alert for the most drought-affected provinces of Tete, Sofala, Gaza, Inhambane, Manica, Zambezia and Maputo.

The revised strategic response plan is targeting about 1.2 million people affected by drought with food security and other interventions in the seven provinces affected until the end of March 2017. The plan also includes a contingency for 190,000 persons that may be affected by floods and cyclones during the same period.

The HCT developed the SRP in April 2016 to support the Government in responding the current drought. The plan was reviewed in November 2016 and has three strategic objectives, namely:

• Provide immediate life-saving and life-sustaining assistance to the most vulnerable members of the populations affected by droughts in the form of food assistance and agricultural inputs, the availability of clean water and nutrition supplements.
• Support the restoration of livelihoods of the drought-affected population through Early Recovery and resilience-building activities
• To promote continued access to education services and ensure coordination and mainstreaming of protection initiatives in drought response interventions.

In terms of funding, the total cost to implement the current plan is estimated at US$ 211 million. The drought emergency response is valued at US$ 179 million. A contingency amount of US$ 32 million has been budgeted for the possible floods/cyclones emergency response. The total funding available for the drought response is 121 million US$, leaving a gap of approximately US$ 58 million. The emergency response will ensure that the most vulnerable members of those affected by drought and other extreme weather phenomena are prioritized in the delivery of assistance.

Efforts will be made to ensure that farmers are provided with seeds and other agricultural inputs, to ensure that they are able to plant their crops when the rains arrive and reap an abundant harvest in March of 2017. Furthermore, food assistance is planned to be provided to the most affected population in the seven provinces.

The protection cluster will provide advisory support to governement and humanitarian actors so that the response is gender-sensitive. They will also advocate for an appropriate response for targeting the most vulnerable and excluded.

The nutrition cluster will engage in active screening and case management of malnourished cases (both children and pregnant and lactating women) at the community level, and support infant and young child feeding in emergencies.

The education cluster will provide support to school feeding in prioritised areas, temporary learning spaces and teaching and learning materials for children and teachers affected by drought, flood, cyclones and/or military conflict. The cluster will further coordinate preparedness interventions and assess the current response capacity to respond to possible emergencies.

The WASH cluster will work to improve the access of potable water of households affected by drought through (i) water trucking where there were no other response options, (ii) drilling new boreholes where waters tables have dropped significantly, (iii) distribution of chlorine water treatment product (certeza) and (iv) rehabilitation/upgrading of existing community water points.