Anticipatory Action in Somalia: Learning from 2020

Top-line outcome

In June 2020, a projected rise in food insecurity in Somalia triggered the first OCHA-facilitated collective anticipatory action allocation. The allocation helped to reduce the impact of desert locusts, flooding and COVID-19 for 638,718 Somalis, and it generated an additional US$181 million to support the response. 

According to Humanitarian Coordinator Adam Abdelmoula, these funds helped prevent 500,000 people from sliding into the ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’ phases of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) between July 2020 and January 2021. 

The pilot resulted in many lessons learned, many of which have informed other anticipatory action pilots.

Somalia overview

Somalia suffers from recurrent food and nutrition crises. It has high levels of vulnerability and is prone to erratic and extreme weather patterns. At the same time, data on food insecurity and climate is widely available. As a result, humanitarian organizations developed an anticipatory action framework for Somalia under the Humanitarian Coordinator’s leadership, in collaboration with the Federal Government of Somalia and with support from technical partners, donors, and the World Bank. 

The pilot combined four components: forecast and triggers using IPC projections as a proxy indicator for drought, anticipatory actions, pre-arranged finance using CERF, and a rigorous learning agenda.

2020 hunger crisis

In mid-2020 (1The trigger threshold was reached again in February 2021, this time driven by an impending drought; he framework was activated again) Somalia’s food insecure population was projected to reach 3.5 million people between July and September, up from 1.1 million at the start of 2020, due to desert locust infestations, flooding and COVID-19. This meant that 22 per cent of the population would be in crisis levels of food insecurity (IPC phase 3+). 

These conditions exceeded the threshold to activate the anticipatory action framework. Therefore, on 19 June 2020, the then Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, activated the Somalia framework on a pilot basis, releasing $15 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to deliver humanitarian assistance to vulnerable communities. 

Drawing from the Anticipatory Action Framework designed for drought, the Somalia Humanitarian Country Team and clusters developed a multi-sector response, including health, food security, water and sanitation, nutrition, and protection assistance.

The activities funded in 2020 include:

  • Food Security and Livelihoods: providing cash to vulnerable households, mitigating loss of livestock through vaccination, and preventing and controlling desert locust outbreaks.
  • Health: Early warning messaging, infection prevention campaigns coupled with control and treatments, as needed, as well as essential medication and supplies provision. 
  • Nutrition: providing nutrient supplements to circumvent an increase in acute malnutrition and excess mortality. 
  • Protection: Strengthening of protection monitoring systems and support to monitoring activities.
  • WASH: rehabilitating boreholes and shallow wells, disinfection of water sources and distribution of hygiene kits to enable access to clean water. 

Did it work?

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) reports by UN agencies and a survey by the evaluation organization Axiom indicate positive impacts of the pilot. For example:

  • The World Health Organization (WHO) saw reduced outbreaks of epidemic-prone diseases, especially diarrhoea, malaria and respiratory infections, in the target districts compared to a similar time in the previous two years. Outbreaks that did occur were more effectively contained.
  • The International Organization for Migration (IOM) found that the early rehabilitation and upgrading of boreholes improved household finances, increased mental health, kept livestock healthier, reduced water-related disputes and mitigated migration. 
  • Coordinated health and nutrition trainings enhanced local capacities to meet needs. 
  • Cash assistance helped prevent shocks related to household consumption, with recipients noting it improved their quality of life above any other intervention. 
  • Livelihood assistance, especially from the Food and Agriculture Organization, was noted as a key contributor to asset preservation and the reduced need to out-migrate.

Challenges and lessons learned

Pandemic-related access restrictions presented a major challenge, as did global supply disruptions and late tax exemptions. Additional lessons drawn from the pilot can be summarized as follow: 

  • The assistance was timely, but some Somalis said it could have come even earlier. They could have adapted better to the upcoming crisis if there was improved information-sharing about the window of opportunity to take mitigation measures. Anticipatory action is thus most effective when linked to a specific, immediate shock.
  • •Rather than starting with the trigger development when designing an anticipatory action framework, it would be best to start by identifying feasible anticipatory interventions, assessing operational readiness and disaster-specific needs, and building the trigger from there. 
  • Affected people should play a greater role in co-designing anticipatory action frameworks and be regularly consulted at every stage of the process, according to the Axiom survey with Somalis who received assistance.  
  • Programming must better address the needs of older people and people with disabilities, such as by providing cash transfers to enable access to health care. 
  • The role of protection activities and protection mainstreaming in anticipatory action must be clarified and strengthened. 

Next steps

Closer coordination is needed between CERF emergency allocations and resilience programming to ensure that longer-term resilience interventions are not reprogrammed towards emergency response, and to enable CERF to target vulnerable groups not eligible for resilience support. A process learning report led by the Centre for Disaster Protection (CDP) found that there was a need to manage the tension in driving forward a (welcomed) vision for systemic change, while listening deeply and integrating perspectives of partners and in-country colleagues.

Partners also agree that anticipatory action will gain the most traction if it is woven into existing processes and frameworks, rather than being an add-on activity.  

Conclusion

The first OCHA-led pilot showcased that collective anticipatory action could be done at scale. It provided the basis upon which to develop and refine subsequent pilots, including an even earlier second activation within Somalia.

 

Overall Documentation
Framework
Framework summary
The Economist article
CERF allocation summary 2020
CERF Final Report 2020

Process Learning
Centre for Disaster Protection (CDP) Process Learning Report
CDP summary presentation of Process Learning Report
Beneficiary Assessment for Independent Evaluation of Anticipatory Action Pilot in Somalia

Agency Stories
WHO web story
IOM web story