Inter-Agency Working Group (IAWG) Guiding principles on disaster risk reduction and climate change: East and Horn of Africa

This study aims to provide useful recommendations on how to harmonize and boost up the progress that the humanitarian and development actors are trying to achieve in strengthening disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation among vulnerable communities in East and Horn of Africa.

The East and Horn of Africa are among the most affected regions worldwide by extreme climatic events such as floods, landslides, drought leading to massive damages on the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable populations. The intensity and frequency of those natural hazards are increasing due to climate change, and this trend is set to continue. In addition to the various initiatives which took place since 2011, more efforts must be put by governmental and non-governmental actors to support the vulnerable populations in mitigating the effects of seasonal and non-seasonal natural hazards and avoid losing the benefit of development efforts.

In East Africa, a large number of international humanitarian and development organizations are part of the Inter Agency Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change. The purpose of this group is to share evidence-based learning and build consensus through dialogue and networking in order to influence Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change (CC) policy and practice in East and Central Africa while helping to bridge the humanitarian – development divide. This working group is also composed of three sub-groups: an Evidence Based Learning group, a Cross Border Risk Assessment group and a Governance group.

The Evidence Based Learning group (composed of ACTED, ACTS, ADRA, CARE International, and the IFRC) compiled and synthetized this information in order to make it more accessible to the practitioners and to encourage DRR & CC actors in the region to adjust their programming based on all the learning which has been generated since 2011.