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1. INTRODUCTION

This Strategy draws extensively from the Inter Agency Standing Committee Principles on Durable Solutions, the IOM Progressive Resolution of Displacement Situations framework and Migration Crisis Operational Framework, the IGAD Regional Strategy on Forced Displacement and Mixed Migration, and the interagency Strategy on Protection, Return and Recovery for North East Nigeria.

1.1 CONTEXT

The Somali Region is a region with high levels of displacement and migration as shown in IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) data, common humanitarian reporting from the region, and Government of Ethiopia statistics. This has been driven by factors ranging from conflict, environmental degradation, natural and manmade disasters, changing livelihoods strategies in an evolving political economy, poverty, and progressive depletion of coping mechanisms available to the displaced and host communities.

IDPs in the Somali region live in ad hoc sites and settlements, commonly in relatively underdeveloped and marginalized communities. Host communities face preexisting and precarious socio-economic situations plagued by food insecurity, limited access to basic social services and economic infrastructure, poor livelihood opportunities, shifting land ownership and access patterns, and a diminishing natural resource base. Consecutive years of drought and a profound nutrition crisis have deepened the hardships faced by the region’s population, sorely depleting communities’ coping mechanisms and resilience at a time when they are most needed.

According to Round VI DTM Report as of August 2017, there were 1,099,776 displaced individuals in Ethiopia of which 573,886 were displaced in the Somali Region. The displaced are dispersed across 287 sites as at August 2017. Of the total regional displaced caseload 309,006 are displaced as a result of drought, 261,060 as a result of conflict and 3,820 due to flash flooding. The 2017 IDP caseload has shifted significantly since initial assessments in 2014. Those first assessments saw a majority of displacement attributable to conflict whereas by mid-2017 the majority of IDPs’ displacement is drought-induced. Of the IDPs in the Somali Region, 54 % percent have been displaced for a year or longer.