Paper details
| Paper authors | Alemayehu B. Hordofa |
| In panel on | 'Nexus Thinking Revisited: Bridging Humanitarian, Development, Peace, and Climate Change.' |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Exposure and response to disaster have been closely linked to Ethiopia’s conflict history and politics. Even though disaster risk management activities have been informally practiced with local knowledge, Ethiopia started to institutionally respond to disaster with the establishment of ‘The Relief and Rehabilitation Commission’ in the aftermath of the 1973/74 famine. The country (re)established the institution with varying mandates, adopted or amended laws relevant to disaster risk management, and endorsed multiple disaster risk management policies at different times. Recently, the government of Ethiopia drafted a new Disaster Risk Management policy as a part of its post-2018 wider legal and policy reforms and tabled the same for endorsement by the Council of Ministers.
This paper examines how the ‘nexus approach’ has evolved (is evolving) in Ethiopia’s normative frameworks. Accordingly, I aim to analyze whether the contemporary response to disaster in the forms of legal and policy tools replicates past response options or substantially progresses toward ending humanitarian needs by linking responses to peacebuilding, human rights, and development.
The paper uses a qualitative methodology and relies on content analysis of legal authorities, policy documents, and an in-depth literature review. It broadens our understanding of how the triple-nexus approach is demonstrated in the thinking of disaster risk management in Ethiopia and examines the (in) adequacy of the normative frameworks to address the need.
