NORWEGIAN HORN OF AFRICA EMERGENCY AID: HOLDING

C O N F I D E N T I A L OSLO 000593 SIPDIS FOR USAID/FFP (CAROL MUTAMBA),USAID/OFDA (KASEY CHANNELL), PRM (JANET DEUTSCH),AF/E (JOEL WIEGERT) E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/25/2019 TAGS: EAID PREF EAGR ET KE SO EUN SUBJECT: NORWEGIAN HORN OF AFRICA EMERGENCY AID: HOLDING BACK FOR THE FLOODS REF: STATE 96625 Classified By: Political and Economic Counselor Cherrie Daniels for rea sons 1.4(b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary: Poloff delivered reftel demarche to MFA officials on September 24. After the Government of Norway (GON)'s announcement September 9 that it would dedicate about $8.7 million to emergency food aid for the Horn of Africa region, the MFA emphasized that Norway has only about that amount (between 8 and 9 million USD) left in its emergency aid budget for the rest of the world, for the rest of the calendar year. Since the Norwegians are already closely monitoring the situation in the Horn of Africa, they were already largely familiar with the information relayed in reftel. The officials noted that effects from El Nino (i.e. flooding disasters) might turn on the tap for further aid to the region. End Summary. ¶2. (C) Poloff met September 24 with Torgeir Fyhri, Senior Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Humanitarian Issues Section. Fyhri is a specialist on the Horn of Africa. He said that a delegation of MFA officials, including himself and Geir Pedersen, Director General of the MFA's Division for UN, Peace, and Humanitarian Issues, visited the region in early September. The delegation spent most of its time in Kenya, including a visit to the Dadaab camp for Somali refugees. As a result of the visit, the Norwegian government decided to release 50 million kroner (approximately $8.7 million) for emergency food aid, which it announced September 9. Fyhri characterized the situation in the region as "severe" and "only likely to get worse in the medium term." ¶3. (C) Fyhri said that the GON was not done with the internal discussion on how to spend the money but he expected that the funds would be disbursed to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA),the Kenyan Red Cross, and the World Food Program (WFP). Fyhri mentioned the difficulty of choosing where to apply the aid, as the situation in Somalia was particularly disastrous, but Al-Shabaab's presence there made delivery relatively expensive. ¶4. (C) When Poloff pressed the issue of whether Norway could contribute more in the coming months, Fyhri paused before stating that there was not much left in the government's emergency aid budget this calendar year -- only an amount on the order of what has already been given to the Horn region. He said that most of the money available in the GON budget for emergency aid thi year had already been spent by this point and te GON was holding some money in reserve for sevee crises that might occur, most likely also in theHorn of Africa region, when the drought turned t flooding as a result of the El Nino weather pattern. While expressing appreciation for Norway's recent contribution, Poloff reemphasized the reftel USG positions on the importance and severity of this food crisis, and that money was needed to relieve suffering now. HEG