ACORD

The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) is a land locked country located in the Horn of Africa with 75 million people and covering 1,127,127 square kilometers. The country is rich in culture and history and endowed with a huge resource potential, which remains largely untapped due to governance issues and associated conflicts, widespread poverty and destitution caused by external and internal factors, deeply embedded gender inequality in the country's society and culture and all of these are perpetuated by HIV/AIDS.

ACORD has been operating in Ethiopia since 1994-95, working with the poor and marginalized in Addis Ababa, Oromia (Shashamene), Gambella and Dire Dawa. New interventions are planned for the marginalized areas of the Somali and Borena (Oromia) regions, which are predominantly inhabited by pastoralists and severely affected by recurrent droughts and inter-clan conflicts and between Government and resistance groups.

Overall Objective

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Thematic Focus

 

 

Livelihoods: ACORD builds the capacity of community owned microfinance institutions and CBO managed saving and credit schemes in the urban areas. The provision of technical advisory services, trainings and setting-up of systems and guidelines are the major practical activities. In the rural areas the program delivers animal health services to the pastoralist community and supports fishing and small scale income generation activities, particularly for women.

 

 

Conflict: ACORD is engaged in addressing inter-clan and inter-ethnic conflicts in the Gambella region. It has influenced the regional government and through it the federal Government to listen to the peoples' opinion and suggestions on the recurrent latent and open conflicts in the area. This is coming out of a long process of persuasion and interaction with the local government. For the first time various community groups from different clans and ethnic background sit together to discuss root causes of their conflict and seek solutions. The series of public meetings and focused workshops have contributed a lot in the peace building process particularly after the December 2003 open conflict that resulted in loss of life and displacement of people in Gambella. ACORD works closely with local NGOs and faith based organizations and plays an important role in building their capacities and skills in peace building and advocacy. This partnership has also contributed to bring together different communities, ethnic groups and people of different faith groups for peace building.

 

In HIV/AIDS the intervention is mainly focused on awareness raising and capacity building of various community based anti-aids groups. Advocacy for free access to ARV is a newer initiative.

 

Gender is integrated into all ACORD's work, both at a practical level addressing livelihood and more strategically to enhance the capacity of women's organizations in terms of participation and decision making in community affairs of their concern. Key activities include awareness raising, practical support and strengthening of women organizations at the grass root level. Moreover, ACORD Ethiopia is starting to challenge and influence negative cultural practices and attitudes that threaten the freedom and rights of women. The widespread polygamy and dowry cultural practices are for instance being targeted in Gambella through action research, workshop and dialogue towards change.

 

Social Action: The service delivery is implemented and targeted through community based organizations, integrating issues related to participation, rights, poverty and institutional development. It also provides practical supports for institutional development of CBOs particularly in urban areas. Many grassroots CBOs supported by ACORD have evolved into bigger umbrella organizations at local and regional level and are now engaging in policy debates. Influencing the change in the Ethiopian association law in favor of registration of umbrella organizations, accessing space in various social and development committees, standing for the right of their grass root member CBOs and individuals and their participation in PRSP process are some examples. The CBOs and umbrella networks have a key role in supporting their members in terms of HIV/AIDS awareness raising, educating their members on basic human rights and the constitution, providing credit and saving services, as well as health and other social support services.

  

Advocacy

The main advocacy issue is related to food sovereignty and particularly food aid and land tenure issues, by way of challenging local policies and global negative impacts. Research are planned this year to clearly understand and articulate the impact of food aid on local capacities, production and marketing.

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Who We Work With

• PANE: ACORD is a leading member of the national civil society network PANE (Poverty Action Network Ethiopia), which engages in debate on governance and policy issues. The ACORD Area Programme Manager is currently serving as the chairman of PANE. PANE bring together different groups and institutions to exchange their experiences and voice their shared concerns for better impact, in such national processes as the poverty reduction strategy paper, Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme, (SDPRP) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) needs assessment.

• Pastoralist Forum Ethiopia (PFE). A key contribution of ACORD as a member of PFE has been to bring forth the issues of the long neglected Nuer pastoralists in the national pastoralist advocacy. ACORD has also contributed actively in the drafting of the pastoralist livelihood policy, which was later ratified by the parliament of Ethiopia.

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