Response Plan Overview
PEOPLE IN NEED: 8.25M
PEOPLE TARGETED: 7.6M
REQUIREMENTS (US$): $2.6B
OPERATIONAL PARTNERS: 335
SO1: Prevent loss of life of 6.7 million of the most severely vulnerable people, including 1.4 million children under five by the end of 2023, by decreasing the prevalence of hunger, acute malnutrition, public health threats, and outbreaks, and the impact of armed conflict.
SO2: Support 2.8 million people to sustain their lives and contribute to building resilience by the end of 2023, by ensuring safe, equitable, inclusive and dignified access to livelihoods and essential services.
SO3: Uphold commitments to collective action to address critical protection risks by the end of 2023, by reducing the risks of exclusion, the risks associated with displacement, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and their objects.
The 2023 Somalia Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) is informed by the robust intersectoral analysis of the 2023 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) which identifies 8.25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Somalia. The HRP requires $ 2.6 billion to assist 7.6 million vulnerable people across the whole country representing around 90 per cent of the people in need. This is in line with the IASC Humanitarian system-wide scale-up that came into effect in August 2022 and the HCT’s strategic direction to scaleup response both in magnitude and quality of response to avert the prolonged consecutive drought and risk of Famine. The targeting is informed by the magnitude and severity of the needs identified in the HNO, the partners' capacity to scale up and the operating environment, including access.
The 7.6 million people targeted to receive humanitarian assistance in 2023 include:
- 739,800 newly displaced people (those displaced within the past 12 months)
- 1.1 million protracted IDPs (those displaced for more than 12 months)
- 3.2 million shock-affected urban people
- 4.4 million shock-affected rural people
- 51,300 refugees, asylum seekers and returnees
The highly focused humanitarian response will be anchored in the three Strategic Objectives outlined above. The HRP also outlines how protection mainstreaming, localisation, gender, age and disability, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), and the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) are integrated into specific cluster plans and will be strengthened across the response.
The 2023 HRP is guided by an overarching HCT-endorsed framework that focuses on first-line and second-line lifesaving multisectoral response and builds on the 2022 drought and Famine prevention response. However, it is important to note that the first-line response only refers to the minimum package of assistance to be delivered as a buffer to prevent or reduce the loss of lives until a second-line response is in place. Therefore, the first and second lines refer to the temporal aspect of the response and not be construed or used as a prioritisation tool. Please refer to chapter 1.3 on “Response Parametres” for further information.
To ensure that the immediate life-saving needs of affected people in response to the unprecedented drought and conflict are adequately met, humanitarian partners will ensure commodities and services across all sectors are effectively adapted to the specific needs of different population groups: children, women, pregnant and lactating women, older persons, persons with disabilities, chronic illness and/or limited mobility.
In addition, the 2023 HRP strives to be inclusive and effective to ensure that the humanitarian response takes into account the social and ethnic differences of people in need it seeks to serve, as an estimated 30 per cent of the Somali population may be considered communities with minority affiliations. Experiences documented from previous crises show that members of minorities have been disproportionately affected due to structural and distinct forms of exclusion and discrimination. Minority communities and groups continue to have elevated needs that are different from the population at large.
The current drought and risk of Famine in most parts of Somalia have revealed the importance of agile programme management to quickly respond to rapid contextual challenges. The HRP hence seeks to align with relevant resilience and durable solutions frameworks, with the aim to reduce humanitarian needs, risks, and vulnerabilities in the medium to longer term. Synergies and complementarities with development, resilience and peace initiatives will be strengthened by (i) the continuation of existing durable solutions programmes (e.g Flagship United Nations Joint Programme such as “Saameynta” and the Joint Resilience Action) to enhance the linkages with resilience and nexus programmes focusing on adopting strong area-based and spatial approaches to local integration processes; (ii) complementarity of social safety nets and humanitarian assistance, particularly cash; and (iii) leveraging the Water and Flood Management programme to scale up joined-up responses to flooding and future droughts.
Finally, the 2023 HRP prioritizes improving the quality of response through strengthening inter-cluster monitoring approaches to enable agility and granularity in response analysis that correspond with the fast-evolving situation, emerging needs and priorities. To achieve this, several components of the inter-cluster response monitoring framework will be adjusted/strengthened to better support the strategic decision-making of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) in ensuring a timely, efficient and fit-for-purpose response to humanitarian needs.