Ethiopia

  • Humanitarian Response Plan
  • From: 01/01/2024 to: 31/12/2024
  • Published: 26/02/2024
  • Coordinated by: OCHA

3.9 Nutrition

PEOPLE IN NEED
5.0 million
PEOPLE TARGETED
3.5 million
REQUIREMENTS (US$)
276.4 million
CHILDREN
72%
WOMEN
28%
WITH DISABILITY
15%

Objectives

  • Ensure adequate coverage and equitable access to key life-saving nutrition interventions in situations of acute need in a continuum of care, to reach the entire target population, mainly children under 2 and 5 years of age, in affected areas in an early and consistent manner, by improving early key nutrition actions, the continued availability of commodities and increasing the responsiveness of nutrition services in health facilities and in the community.
  • Adjust the nutrition response in humanitarian action to reach the population most in need of nutritional supplementation (inaccessible areas, displaced population, moderate acute malnourished children, including high risk moderate acute malnutrition (MAM), adolescents, pregnant and/or lactating women, infants, and young children, through rapid response mechanisms, simplified approaches, and adaptive care.
  • Improve the mechanisms for analysis and interpretation of the nutritional situation and response capacity, by improving assessment and analysis methodologies, maintaining, and improving a robust monitoring system. Furthermore, to promote models for prioritization and action in targeting and promoting better preparedness for nutritional crises.
  • Reduce the burden of child wasting by promoting a scalable and affordable package of preventive humanitarian interventions. This package involves inter-cluster collaboration across sectors such as Agriculture, Food, Health, and WASH, among others.
  • Increase community involvement in the first-resort nutrition response and propose gender transformative alternative solutions originating from the local community.



Response

The nutrition response modality focuses on strengthening the capacity of health facilities and communities to provide prevention and treatment services for acute malnutrition in its various forms to both children under five years of age (including children under two) and pregnant and nursing women. In priority areas, according to the severity of the classification, it is strongly recommended to provide a package of key nutrition interventions ensuring a continuum of care that includes in-patient treatment of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) with medical complications, outpatient treatment of SAM without complications, targeted supplementary feeding for MAM, and promotion of infant and young child feeding practices. Priority populations include pregnant and nursing women, infants, newborns, young children, and children under 5 years of age.

The main strategies from the Cluster for 2024 are focused on creating and strengthening the conditions and capacities for nutrition response, such as advocacy, financing, research, innovation, collaboration, and partnerships.

  1. Advocacy, influence and leveraging resources: The Cluster will advocate for increased funding and political commitment for nutrition interventions, especially for the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, among children under 5, pregnant and lactating women, and other vulnerable groups. The Cluster will also influence policies and strategies to ensure that nutrition is integrated into other sectors’ response, such as Health, Food, and WASH.
  2. Evidence generation and knowledge management: The Cluster will generate analyses and share reliable and timely data and information on the nutrition situation and response in Ethiopia, using harmonized methods and tools. The Cluster will also facilitate learning and knowledge exchange among cluster partners and stakeholders, and document and disseminate best practices and lessons learned.
  3. Community engagement and localization: The Cluster will strengthen the engagement and participation of affected communities and local actors in the nutrition response, ensuring that their needs, preferences, feedback, and complaints are taken into account and addressed. The Cluster will also support the capacity development and empowerment of local partners, especially national and sub-national government authorities, civil society organizations and community-based groups.
  4. Gender transformative for nutrition: The Cluster will ensure that the nutrition response is gender-responsive and gender-transformative, addressing the different needs, vulnerabilities, capacities and roles of women, men, girls, and boys, and promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Cluster will also mainstream gender into all aspects of the Cluster coordination and management and foster a gender-sensitive and inclusive culture among cluster partners and stakeholders.
  5. Capacity for contingency, readiness, preparedness, and anticipatory actions: The Cluster will enhance the preparedness and resilience of the nutrition sector and the affected communities to cope with and respond to potential shocks and emergencies, such as droughts, floods, conflicts, and disease outbreaks. The Cluster will also adopt and implement anticipatory actions to mitigate the impact of foreseeable crises and reduce humanitarian needs and costs.

Intercluster sectoral collaboration approach
The nutrition cluster is actively engaged in the Intercluster sectoral collaboration approach. This is relevant for nutrition response as it aims at addressing the complex and multifaceted causes and consequences of malnutrition in the country. To respond effectively to these challenges, different sectors and actors will be working together to coordinate joint responses with their partners towards a common objective. Intercluster sectoral collaboration can help to achieve the following benefits:

  • A people-centered approach that recognizes the diverse and interrelated needs of malnourished population and families and provides holistic and integrated services.
  • Efficiency and cost-effectiveness that reduces drivers of malnutrition and might reduce operational costs by delivering joint interventions at the same time, in the same place, and for the same people.
  • Strengthening links with resilience to address the underlying factors and the long-term impacts of malnutrition, such as food insecurity, poverty, and vulnerability.

The following clusters are part of the intercluster sectoral approach: Nutrition, Health, WASH, Food, Agriculture, education and Child protection.

The nutrition cluster will be supporting partners in the last mile delivery through:

  • Integrating MAM supplementation in the health system (and aligning with identification of targets, registration of cases and monitoring mechanisms), enhancing accountability mechanisms that are still to be defined for nutrition as a participatory engagement.
  • Enhancing the coordination and partnership among the cluster and the broader humanitarian system, as well as with the government and the donors.
  • Integrating MAM supplementation and PLW nutritional support as part of the health system service and not a stand-alone service, by recommending adherence to CMAM protocol, including the reporting system, admission of cases and tracing of cases under program.
  • Microplanning, by using ENCU's enhanced microplan at woreda level, with information on targets, population reached and also information on supplies distributed by quarter vs supplies needed.
  • Tracking tools, by including information collected from partners on the ground on the availability of nutrition supplies and commodities in Activity info. A dashboard will also be developed to track nutrition pipelines and quarter distribution to regions/woredas. Transparency and availability of this information are relevant as mitigation measures.



Financial requirements

the type of modality, and the cost efficiency of the implementing partner providing the full nutrition package of interventions. Economies of scale can be attained if implementing partner coverage is at woreda level and has joint agreements with WHO, UNICEF and WFP as providers of commodities. A huge proportion of the cost of response interventions is for supply procurement (offshore or local production) and transportation. Efforts are to be deployed by main partners for enhancing end user monitoring to avoid misuse and misappropriation. The cost of assessments is also relevant as per increased needed number and quality of representative primary data collection events. The sector is also undertaking nutrition surveys covering health and food security information at livelihood level, increasing the scope, sampling, and costs of data collection.

The preferred costing method for the Nutrition Cluster is based on estimating the unit cost per activity. Partners are strongly encouraged to conduct more Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) for nutrition in emergency interventions in Ethiopia.



Monitoring

The monitoring objectives of Ethiopia’s Nutrition Cluster are:

  • To measure the progress and achievements of the Nutrition Cluster interventions against the planned targets and indicators in the HRP.
  • To ensure the quality and accountability of the Nutrition Cluster interventions in line with national and international standards and guidelines.
  • To provide timely and reliable information and feedback to the Nutrition Cluster partners, donors, government, and other stakeholders on the nutrition situation and response in Ethiopia.
  • To identify the gaps, challenges, and best practices of the Nutrition Cluster interventions and inform decision-making and corrective actions.
  • To support learning and evidence-based advocacy for the Nutrition Cluster and the affected population.