ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) — The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has urged for increased efforts to address the displacement caused by climate change in Ethiopia.
The UN migration agency issued a statement on Thursday, stating that severe drought and extreme weather events in Ethiopia have posed a threat to people’s livelihoods, resulting in the death of livestock and widespread movement of people.
According to the IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) data, over 800,000 people were internally displaced by drought in Ethiopia between November 2022 and June 2023.
An additional 1.1 million people in six regions of Ethiopia have been affected by floods and landslides, as reported by the Ethiopia Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC).
The IOM noted that the movements of people are often unmanaged, forced, and unsafe, leading to humanitarian and protection concerns.
Although most displacement in Ethiopia has been driven by conflict in recent years, the IOM emphasized that people are increasingly being displaced due to climate change, using migration as a coping mechanism and solution to mitigate its impact.
Communities in southern and northeastern Ethiopia are experiencing a devastating drought, reported to be the worst in 40 years, after four consecutive failed rainy seasons from late 2020, according to the IOM.
The drought is expanding in scope and scale into other parts of the country, leading to a “staggering scale of livestock deaths,” with over 4.5 million livestock reported to have died since late 2021 and a further 30 million at risk, as per IOM data.
Climate change-induced displacement is evident in the alarming statistic that one in every four outgoing and returning migrants are from drought-affected regions of Ethiopia, particularly the Somali, Oromia, and Afar regions, as outlined by the IOM.
The IOM highlighted that the drought has reduced the ability of home communities to support migrants, leading to increased migration in search of water, pasture, and assistance.
The IOM emphasized its support for hundreds of thousands of drought-affected people in Ethiopia, stressing the need for more action as the effects of climate change persist.
