UN Humanitarian and Development Chiefs’ Mission to Ethiopia

http://www.undp.org/

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock and United Nations Development Programme Administrator and Vice Chair of the UN Development Group Achim Steiner will travel to Ethiopia from January 27 to 29 to highlight the immense challenge of persistent food insecurity and the new approach to addressing it.

Ethiopia has made remarkable strides in development and addressing food insecurity over the past three decades, but its susceptibility to drought has resulted in recurring food insecurity. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of people on the border between the Somali and Oromo regions have been displaced, requiring additional humanitarian response. Today, millions of people need assistance to survive, for which US$900 million will be required this year.

The UN principals will highlight the need to continue life-saving humanitarian assistance as an urgent priority, while simultaneously laying the foundations for long-term resilience to future shocks and recovery.
They will meet with senior Government officials and humanitarian and development partners, and travel to field locations to meet people who have been affected by drought and assess programmes that link the humanitarian response with resilience and recovery. They will also attend the African Union Summit and participate in a high-level meeting on the New Way of Working.

Who: Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
         Achim Steiner, United Nations Development Programme Administrator and Vice Chair of the UN Development Group

What: Joint Mission to Highlight Food Insecurity and New Approaches to Address It

When: January 27-29, 2018

Where: Ethiopia

For more information, please contact:

UNDP: Christina LoNigro, UNDP New York, Christina.lonigro@undp.org, +1 212 906 5301
Martha Mogus, UNDP Ethiopia, Martha.mogus@undp.org, +251 911 306697

OCHA: Russell Geekie, OCHA New York, geekie@un.org, +1 917 331 0393
Jens Laerke, OCHA Geneva, +41 79 472 9750
Choice Okoro, OCHA Ethiopia, okoroc@un.org, +251 912502695