Drought Recovery Planning Process

Building From
the Bottom Up: Case Study

Livelihood Recovery Assessment 2017 - 2019

Background

In 2016/2017, consecutive years of poor rainfall tipped Somalia into drought
and food insecurity. The humanitarian system rose to the occasion and quickly
responded. As the UN Agencies WFP, FAO and UNICEF noted, through
consensus and coordination, we spoke with one voice locally and
internationally, and mobilized a USD 1.2 billion response. Partners –
humanitarian, development, public and private – pooled their resources and
strengths to expand and deepen the humanitarian footprint1.
As emergency response was underway, international partners such as the
Somali Resilience Program (SomReP) consortium were also engaged,
developing ways to raise the collective voice with Ministries of Planning
Economic Investment and Development (MoPEID) in the Southwest State
(SWS) and Puntland to begin planning the next phase the recovery, and return
to resilience building.

Case Study Methodology

In February 2020, SomReP visited key government and civil society
stakeholders involved in the development and dissemination of the Livelihood
Recovery Assessment to understand their perceptions of the impact of this
process and tool in terms of influencing policy at the country platform level
and strengthening the capacity of member state institutions to lead planning in
the future.

1:Joint Dialogue. WFP, FAO and UNICEF: Food Security & Nutrition Update, Actions Required to Keep Somalia Free of Famine, 01 December 2017

@SomRePOfficial Somali Resilience Programme [email protected] www.somrep.org +252 613 700 032

Case Study 1: Southwest State

The Federal Member State of the Southwest State
was formed around 17th November 2014. At the
time of the drought, the Southwest State had not
fully established all line ministries, defined their roles
or delineated their mandates. Conspicuous in its
absence was a Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs with
a mandate to lead in planning. In fact, the new
ministry only had one staff: a newly appointed
minister. The emergency demanded action and the
Minister of MoPEID seized the mandate, noting
“Mandates were grey. The questions was: who is to
do it? I drove the process in the name of the
ministry.” Minister Arush reached out to
international partners for support.

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs- SWS, Arush Nasir, recounts how
Livelihood Recovery Assessment 2017 to 2019 helped the state
learn the “who” and “how” of leading large-scale planning processes

Since 2015, MoPEID-SWS and SomReP had been working together for coordination
purposes, planning learning events and donor advocacy. By the time the drought
struck, the government and the consortium had already developed informal, trusting
and collaborative ways of working, especially with regards to jointly communicating
member state priorities directly to donors.The SomReP contacted its donor base and
repurposed budgets to support Minister Arush’s intent to lead in the drought recovery
planning process. Resilience programs such as the SomReP have developed flexible
funding arrangements with donors, such as crisis-modifier contingency funds and
design-change protocols, which allow it to be responsive to changes in context and
government needs.

Livelihood Recovery Plan 2017 to 2019, a While at the national level, government, civil society and international partners were
tool to communicate state needs and planning, messaging and mobilizing resources to respond to the humanitarian crisis, at
demonstrate state competence the Southwest State level, Minister Arush worked in close partnership with SomReP
to develop a terms of references and contract a consultant to lead the needs
assessment and develop a response plan. From June to October 2017, MoPEID-SWS
mapped out an inclusive process to engage with civil society, UN and INGOs to
identify and prioritize early, mid-term and long-term recovery and resilience needs to
guide donor investments after the life-saving phase ended. From the Minister’s
perspective, the plan was successful in creating a shared sense of responsibility
amongst all actors at the Southwest State level, “everyone felt ownership of it,
everyone could see a little bit of themselves in the plan.”

Together, government and SomReP outlined a communications strategy, one which focused on simple messaging, highlighting
priorities, but deliberately avoiding putting a price tag on interventions. The plan provided sector priorities for each district in
the state in an easy to understand matrix format. Upon reflecting on Livelihood Recovery Assessment messaging, he noted,“we
were very conscious to not attach dollar figures to our priorities. Dollar figures change the discussion. We wanted to keep the
international community focused on our recovery needs in specific districts. We welcomed all donors support, no matter how
small.We wanted them to feel they all could support our recovery priorities.”
Minister Arush recounted their three-pronged donor engagement strategy. First, the Minister travelled to Mogadishu to
present the plan to the federal level. Later he travelled to Nairobi to advocate directly with SomReP’s and other donors, using
to the plans as a communication tool to highlight government priorities. Finally, plans were summarized and translated into
Somali in order to reach a wider audience in the government and civil society so they could understand and use the plan to
guide their own efforts. Minister Arush noted, “our Livelihood Recovery Assessment was the first plan developed in Somalia
during the crisis. We in the Southwest State were prepared (for the recovery phase).” He felt the Livelihood Recovery Plan
catalyzed government at different levels to take seriously efforts such as Drought Impact Needs Assessment (DINA) and
Recovery and Resilience Framework (RRF) by showing them the positive influence pro-active planning can have in building
confidence in state capacity.

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs SWS, Arush In closing, the Minister noted “they (the government of the Southwest State) now
Nasir, leads discussion on SomReP-supported has a process, a way of developing such plans. I am now in charge of the Ministry of
Early Warning Dashboard for SWS Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, the institution has a clear mandate
and knows what it would need to do if another crisis arose. We still need
institutional support, in fact, SomReP is supporting us to update the Livelihood
Recovery Plans as their timeframe has expired and other shocks have been
experienced. But, the hardest part, knowing who and how has been understood (at
the state level.)”

Case Study 2: Puntland

In contrast to the South West State, the Puntland State was formed in 1998 - and by 2016/2017
drought - had already established line ministries with well-defined mandates in terms of
humanitarian coordination and planning. Up until the drought, MoPEID- Puntland played a more
traditional role with NGO actors such as SomReP, guiding coordination of the different
programs and monitoring project activities. Importantly, staff within the ministry had
experience of how the international humanitarian system functioned, especially the appeal
mechanisms of the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and Humanitarian Response Plans
(HRP) and the difficulty actors face when they are asked to reprogram resources. The Director
General (DG) of MoPEID at the time, Hussein Abdi Jama, noted, “(when the drought broke),
people could do nothing with the rains. They had lost or sold all their assets… (and yet) a lot
of money had been raised for life saving interventions. People did not need more water
trucking, they did not need aid. MoPEID-Puntland wanted to provide a rationale to allow
resources to serve recovery needs.”
Former Director General of Planning-Puntland, Hussein Abdi Jama,

recounts how the Puntland and Southwest member states

presented the findings of the Livelihood Recovery Assessment 2017

to the Somali National Development Council and donors

D.G Jama continued,“It was in the minds of everyone (in government)... that we needed a plan.We in MoPIED-Puntland
decided to put it on paper, we developed a concept note. SomReP immediately agreed to finance it. We informed the
federal government of our plans and moved to implement.”
He recounted how the technical unit from SomReP provided hands-on support to define the assessment’s objectives;
delineate roles for agencies and government; design questionnaire and tools; and facilitated a three-part process,
involving consultation within Puntland amongst government, private sector and civil society, data collection methods and
validation mechanisms. MoPIED mobilized 7 government ministries, Drought Committees, NGOs and private sector to
a three-day consultation and planning meeting whereby SomReP guided participants to agree on the goals, scope and
validation processes. NGOs supported the MoPIED M&E teams to lead the data collection process in the districts.
Finally, SomReP coordinated the development of a communication strategy between the South West State and Puntland
member states.

Puntland Government of Somalia Consultative Workshop for Drought Recovery Plan: a state-led, NGO supported, inclusive and
consultative process created a framework for recovery for both local and international investors and roadmap for whole
government leadership of assessment and recovery planning

“At the Puntland level, I believe the shared-leadership model agreed to between the Ministries of Planning (MoPEID) and
Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management (HADMA) helped to strengthen inter-ministerial coordination and
collaboration and served as a framework for others at different levels to learn from for processes like the DINA.” In October,
the Ministers of HADMA and MoPEID launched the plan, broadcasting its contents on local TV. The Deputy Minister and the
D.G. for MoPEID travelled to Mogadishu and presented it to the National Development Council, a body made up of the

ministries of planning from all the member states. Finally, the government team presented the plan to 11 donors at a
SomReP-organized event in Nairobi.“When we did this report, it convinced the donors what we (the government) could do
this sort of plan. It helped the whole government have credibility. The donors were using the plan to encourage the federal
to do the same. It catalyzed the government to work on recovery planning.” Soon after, with validation and resources from
the Somali Development and Reconstruction Facility (SDRF), the Federal MoPEID started the Drought Recovery & Needs
Assessment (DINA).

The SomReP-supported Livelihood Recovery Assessment for both Puntland and the Southwest State formed these states’
substantive contributions towards the livelihood sections of the Recovery and Resilience Framework. Mr. Jama noted that
even some of the structural recommendations first voiced in the Livelihood Recovery Assessment - and later repeated in the
Relief & Recovery Framework- such as Drought Management Information Center are now under development in the Federal
Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. Mr. Jama added that the plans aided Puntland local response, “It helped the Drought
Response Committees, who had raised a lot of (private) local resources, know what to do with those resources.”
Former SomReP Chief of Party, Andrew Lanyon, remarked, “I think that the DINA and RRF were going to happen anyway.
However, I believe that the Livelihood Recovery Assessment hastened the policy discussion around recovery and built
confidence with donors in the leadership role which the government could play in the process. Most importantly, it
quickened the pace for funding of early recovery, with donors like the EU announcing new resources within weeks of the
assessments release.”

Conclusion

Area-based resilience-building programs such as the SomReP work from the bottom-up, supporting informal community
institutions and formal state level structures to plan and implement disaster risk reduction. By remaining sensitive to the
evolving needs of communities and local government, resilience-building programs can catalyze processes which reach up
layers of government, foster new ways of working and linkages which might be more difficult to evolve from traditional
top-down approaches. Shocks, such as the drought of 2016/2017, can challenge emergent government institutions. However,
well positioned NGO actors with the right relationships and skills can support governments to take leadership and gain
hands-on experience and confidence to lead in planning and advocacy for their own development priorities.