Ministry, WFP Officials Consult on Effective Humanitarian Assistance Delivery, Resilience Building Work

Ministry, WFP Officials Consult on Effective Humanitarian Assistance Delivery, Resilience Building Work

Addis Ababa, January 26/2024(ENA) State Minister of Finance Semereta Sewasew consulted today with World Food Programme (WFP) Assistant Executive Director Valerie Guarnieri on effective humanitarian assistance delivery and expanding resilience building work.

After highlighting the long-standing cooperation of Ethiopia with WFP on life saving and relief measures, the officials discussed the ongoing efforts, reforms in food assistance delivery and issues that need consideration.

On the occasion, State Minister Semereta stated that Ethiopia is facing multiple challenges as is true for many countries around the world.

The various man-made and natural disasters have been putting the lives of people at exceeding risk, especially in the most vulnerable places, she added.

As a result of these factors, the need for humanitarian assistance has been increasing disproportionately to the capacity to respond to all the needs.

According to her, the Government of Ethiopia has been exerting maximum efforts within its limited capacity and resources to reach the most susceptible people in coordination with various partners, among which includes the World Food Programme (WFP).

The World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, is playing critical roles in life-saving food assistance and unconditional cash transfers to millions of the most vulnerable people in Ethiopia, including in Afar, Amhara, Tigray and Somali regions.

The state minister added the government-led Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is also covering a significant portion of people in need, though the support is unparalleled with the mounting needs.

According to a press release of Ministry of Finance, the Government of Ethiopia has also been focusing on resilience-building interventions to protect the livelihoods of vulnerable people through various income diversification and generation efforts as a sustainable way of creating self-reliant people.

WFP Assistant Executive Director Valerie Guarnieri, on her part emphasized the need for improved considerations between the Ethiopian government and all humanitarian actors.

She said the importance of strong alignment and coordination with the government and other similar endeavours is critical to prioritize reaching the most needy people.

In this regard, enhancing the practice of availing and sharing updated data to create synergy among government-led partner-supported interventions has been raised as a critical point.

During the discussion, the importance of creating a unified national system to register data to identify beneficiaries and manage prioritization would increase the effectiveness of all kinds of humanitarian support rectifying the overlapping assistance.

It was also agreed that the national ID programme in this respect will play a paramount role in building a credible social registry system for the effective management of humanitarian assistance and beyond.

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