Comprehensive Review of 2016-17 ECHO Horn of Africa Drought Response

The Horn of Africa has been affected by a variety of climatic events which have led to several major droughts in the last 15 years. The international aid system has tried to adjust to these events and improve its capacity to respond. The most recent episode of severe drought took place in 2016-17. This led to a huge international relief effort, and despite very high malnutrition rates, enormous loss of livestock assets and a great deal of displacement, mass mortality was avoided across the region, and famine conditions did not ensue. In 2018, the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) contracted the INSPIRE consortium to assess how the response by the international humanitarian community as a whole, and ECHO in particular, had changed since the previous droughts in the Horn of Africa (HoA), in 2011-12. The review aimed to analyse the factors that determined the performance of the response, to document improved practices and the challenges in their implementation, and to identify lessons, so that improvements can be made to ECHO’s operational procedures, structures and policies.