Written by: Samuel Tadesse, CARE Ethiopia, Emergency Operations Officer, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

CARE began working in Ethiopia in response to the year 1984/85 famine, implementing massive relief operations for over a decade. Over the past five years, CARE has made a concerted effort to shift from relief to development interventions using a Household Livelihood Security Framework. CARE Ethiopia currently implements over fifteen programs covering Sexual Reproductive Health, Primary Health, Water and Sanitation, Food Security, Pastoral Livelihood Development, HIV/AIDS, Small Economic Activity Development, a Community-based Therapeutic Care Program (CTC), a Productive Safety Net Program, Livelihoods Diversification and Expansion, Civil Society Strengthening and Good Governance, Relief and Drought Mitigation. CARE Ethiopia’s average annual budget has been in excess of US $ 14 Million.

CARE is one of Sphere counterparts and is involved in training of trainers, local awareness creation and sphere auditing. Two emergency staff, Dereje Adunga and Samuel Tadesse, have been engaged in dissemination of sphere within CARE and counter part government and non government organization. A series of awareness creation workshops have been organized in various parts of the country and more than 100 personnel received 3-5day sphere trainings. CARE, in collaboration with donors, have supported these trainings by providing logistics and distribution of Sphere manuals (more than 200 to date).

1. All disaster response activities in Ethiopia are coordinated by Government and UN agencies. Sector based taskforces, such as water, health, agriculture etc are a key tool in this co-ordination.   In the drought emergency responses of 2002/3, the Ethiopian government influenced NGOs to follow the local standard 1900Kcal/person in the distribution of general food aid. NGOs advocated following sphere standards and Donors and Government agreed to switch to 2100Kcal/person. In similar ways, several advocacy efforts has been made in various sector based emergency related forums. Sphere is the major source document for local emergency guideline development and relief implementation and evaluation.

2. The “unmet basic needs” tool used in Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment (REA) in Disaster Situations. Is based against sphere standards. REA  has now been used twice in Ethiopia and it’s usage provides an opportunity to expand awareness and use of Sphere standards.

3. Application in the academic curriculum. Bahirdar University in Ethiopia recently opened a disaster management department in which Sphere materials are used for reference.

1. Some of the sphere minimum standards are set at much higher levels than that achieved in “normal” situations. The Government is concerned that Sphere standards can not be reached in the short term, even outside the context of emergency situations. Use of sphere standards in emergency is thus seen to rapidly create dependency and undermine traditional livelihoods.

2. At trainings organized and conducted for lower and middle level professional and field experts, the issue of credibility/acceptance of Sphere by higher officials (policy makers) of the country is often raised. Unless Sphere is endorsed by these people the local people have no capacity/authority to apply the standards.

Generally, Sphere has served as a guideline for relief planning, ongoing project monitoring and final evaluation. Future adoption of the use sphere standards will have great advantages for a country like Ethiopia in which humanitarian crises are endemic.