Supporting ongoing efforts by the United States Government, in concert with the United Nations and the donor community, to respond to drought and food insecurity in the Horn of Africa.

commends the timely response of the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to early warning signals of drought in the Horn of Africa, and for providing substantial assistance for the humanitarian response in fiscal year 2016 and to date in fiscal year 2017;

commends USAID’s quick deployment of a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) between March and November 2016, in response to the previous drought in northeastern and central Ethiopia, which, by working with international partners, resulted in the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance declining from approximately 10,200,000 in late 2015 to a projected 5,600,000 by the end of 2017;

commends the Somali diaspora in the Horn of Africa, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe, for spearheading the response to humanitarian needs in Somalia, and encourages financial institutions to explore means to facilitate the flow of charitable donations and remittances to populations in need;

commends the work of United Nations agencies and international, national, and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in providing sustained life-saving assistance to vulnerable populations across the Horn of Africa, leading to improvements in malnutrition rates since 2011;

commends USAID for its work to date to mitigate the impact of environmental shocks to pastoralist communities across the Horn of Africa, and calls on the Department of State and USAID to continue providing robust, long-term development supporting programs that build resilience, protect livelihoods, and strengthen global food security through programs such as USAID’s Office of Food for Peace and Bureau for Food Security, as well as programs to provide drought relief and emergency food assistance implemented by the World Food Program (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and nongovernmental organizations, including faith-based and non-faith-based organizations;

calls on the President to appoint high-level officials able to engage the international community in joining the United States to respond to this crisis, including an Administrator for USAID, a Director for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, an Assistant USAID Administrator for Africa, and an Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs;

urges the Government of Kenya to publicly declare that the Dadaab refugee complex will remain open, respect prima facie status for new arrivals from Somalia, and work with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya to restart the registration of refugees, including from Somalia, at their points of entry, re-establish fair, transparent, and effective asylum procedures across the country, and put in place robust border protection monitoring to track humanitarian indicators inside Somalia and assess the needs of new arrivals; and

calls on the United States Government and the international community, including international, national, and local NGOs, to continue life-saving assistance and development activities in order to alleviate drought and food insecurity in the region to avert the catastrophic consequences of drought in the Horn of Africa.