Integrated Emergency Livestock  response for Drought Affected Pastoralists in three districts of Afder Zone, Somali Region, Ethiopia. Somali Regional State is one of the 9 regional states of Ethiopia. The population of the region is estimated at 5,748,998 (CSA, 2014) out of which 46 percent are females and the remaining 54 percent are males. Somali region is predominantly pastoralists and the livelihood activities are dependent on the natural resource base, and are therefore vulnerable to covariate shocks such as a drought. The humanitarian situation in Ethiopia is not showing signs of improvement especially in Southern and southeastern parts of the country.
The 2017 Government-led multi-agency and multi-sector mid-year needs assessment confirmed underperformance of the recent belg seasonal (March-May) rain performance. The recently released government appeal by the Ethiopian government through the HRD (Humanitarian Response Document, Mid-year review 2017) indicates that 8.5 million people are in need of emergency food assistance, some 3.6 million pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under the age of 5 are projected to develop moderate acute malnutrition. For pastoral areas this is mainly because of decreased livestock productivity and high mortality of livestock which are the main source of food and cash for this community. Pastoral communities are the worst affected. In Somali Region 1.7m which makes 31% of the population of that Region are in need of humanitarian assistance. Due to the loss of water and pasture large scale death of animals were reported. FAO estimated loss of 80% small ruminants and 40 % of larger livestock around those areas. The FEWS NET(July,2017) outcome analysis using a Household Economy Approach (HEA) with reference to the recently updated baselines for Somali Region  indicates that, even with safety-net transfers, approximately 2.5 million people will require emergency food assistance in Somali Region during the July-December period.  The areas most severely affected by drought include Afder Zone.
Accordingly UNOCHA EHF has allocated funding to respond to the continuing emergency which is based on the results of the mid-year assessment and the Prioritization exercise. In this regard EHF in its 2nd round allocation prioritized support to integrated livestock response including feed linked to targeted animal health and destocking for 1.75m households to the end of the year.
IRE is already responding to the emergency in three zones, Afder, Sitti and Liben and intends to scale up the response further to save lives and reduce morbidity due to drought and acute food insecurity.  To this end this proposed project will scale up the emergency livestock response to drought affected population in Hargelle, Elkere and Dollobay Districts of Afder Zone with the objective of strengthening and facilitating  the availability of credible, demand-led and coordinated emergency animal health services in the face of drought for pastoralist communities to safeguard livestock based livelihoods . The project is expected to produce two major results and two outputs. The outcomes that include improvement of animal health service provision to drought affected pastoralists and protection of livelihoods assets of the drought affected communities from negative coping strategies through supplementary livestock feeding.  Similarly, the project outputs include that drought affected livestock received supplementary livestock feed and drought affected pastoralist communities accessed animal health service 
The target groups are pastoralists that are highly affected by the drought. The intervention includes animal health, animal feed provision and logistic support for local government animal health offices for timely livestock vaccination campaign. The project will be implemented over a period of six months with the support of local government and community.