The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) adopted the National Disaster Risk Management Policy and Strategy(NDRMPS) in 2013. Adopting the policy involved a paradigm shift away from reactive emergency response-based disaster risk management (DRM) toward a more proactive approach. The new approach emphasises a shift away from drought and other emergency response approaches toward a multi-hazard, multi-sector approach within which all hazards will be given attention and all government sectors will participate in DRM activities.

Section 3.5 of the policy puts particular emphasis on the need to mainstream DRM into every lead sector institution. This section clearly indicates that ‘DRM is a cross cutting issue and responsibilities of multiple sectoral institutions and thus concerned bodies must implement it
by integrating it into their regular development activities.’ The policy further says ‘DRM shall be mainstreamed into development plans of government institutions and private sector organizations (NDRMPS, 2013).’ Accordingly, for the last seven years, the government has
attempted fully to implement the policy and its strategies, including the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction (DRR)/DRM across all lead sector institutions. Almost all stakeholders and partners, however, including the National Disaster Risk Management Commission
(NDRMC), are of the opinion that the policy and its strategies have not been fully implemented. As a result, this study has been initiated and sponsored by Oxford Policy Management (OPM) under the Building Resilience in Ethiopia (BRE) programme to assess the progress of the implementation of the 2013 DRM policy and level of DRM mainstreaming in selected key target lead sector institutions in Ethiopia. The study has been conducted by Multi-DREM Consulting Service PLC.​

The assessment has been conducted in nine selected targeted government institutions: the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Ministry of Water, Irrigation,
and Electricity (MoWIE), the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Peace (MoP), the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC),the NDRMC, and Addis Ababa University (AAU). Further consultations were
undertaken with six development and humanitarian partners who are working closely with the NDRMC in the implementation of DRM activities: the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(UNOCHA), the European Union (EU), the Catholic Relief Service (CRS), World Vision Ethiopia (WVE), and CARE Ethiopia.





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