Response - Recovery - Resilience for Conflict Affected Communities in Ethiopia Project - Additional Financing 1

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The parent project is being implemented during a five-year period (2022-2026) and financed by a US$300 million IDA Grant. Financed activities will be grouped into three components, focusing on rebuilding and improving access to basic services and climate-resilient community infrastructure for conflict-affected communities (Component 1), improving access to multi-sectoral response services for survivors of GBV (Component 2), learning and project management (Component 3), and a zero-dollar Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC, Component 4). Components 1 and 2 will address immediate needs and response activities, conduct medium-term recovery activities for sustainable solutions for IDPs and host communities, and lay the foundations for long-term institutional strengthening of both the Federal and local government entities and systems to increase the resilience of communities towards risks of conflict. Component 1: Rebuilding and Improving Access to Basic Services and Climate-resilient Community Infrastructure (Cost: US$210.0 million)Component 1 will focus on rebuilding and improving the access of selected communities affected by the conflicts in the country to basic services and climate-resilient community infrastructure. This will include provision of rapid response basic services to respond to needs of conflict-affected communities in the immediate terms (12-18 months) and to lay foundations for more sustainable support with a focus on health, education, WASH, and other basic services as needed and feasible. These activities will be bundled under sub-component 1.1. Sub-component 1.2 will finance recovery activities, starting with community planning and consultations and consequent community-focused and community-driven sub-projects for basic services and community climate-resilient infrastructure. Sub-component 1.3 will focus on strengthening the capacity of Federal and local government and non-government institutions to engage in prevention and respond to conflict disasters, thereby strengthening communities’ resilience.Sub-component 1.1: Community-based Rapid Response Basic Services (Cost: US$53.0 million)The project will address some of the selected communities’ current needs for basic services, drawing on available and/or rapid needs assessments. This response is, on the one hand, necessary to address urgent needs of communities, and, on the other hand, it allows the commencement of consultations and planning processes for sustainable solutions, thereby showing the necessary material commitment of the GoE to addressing IDP and host community needs. The project will not duplicate ongoing humanitarian interventions, which are focused on provision of subsistence cash, food, or non-food household items. Rather, support will focus on delivery of mobile basic services, which take into consideration the potential mobility of target populations and do not preclude or influence IDPs’ decision to integrate or relocate at a later stage. As the situation is fluid, response support may be provided as needed during the course of the project.Based on the model of mobile clinics, speed schools, and the existence of IDP self-help organizations, the sub-component will finance mobile interventions, for example, in health, education, and WASH in conflict-affected communities to address their respective needs. Where government structures are sufficiently strong (including in terms of meeting procurement requirements), the project may finance specialized vehicles, equipment, other goods for provision of services, and the deployment costs of staff. It is expected, however, that in most cases the government would outsource large parts of the delivery of respective mobile services to external actors. The mobile teams will provide services, such as medical assessment and distribution of medication, building on learning of similar health interventions conducted in Tigray. Education interventions will similarly seek to build on existing experience from World Bank-supported operations, for example, provision of informal education support through the World Bank-financed Read@Home Program and more formal education approaches with a focus on accelerated learning, for example, through speed schools with accelerated programs. WASH and other basic services may also be provided based on rapid needs assessments. The sub-component will be facilitated by the project’s Federal Project Coordination Unit (FPCU) in close coordination with the respective Regional Bureaus of health, education, social affairs, and WASH. The FPCU staff will lead the establishment of requirements and standards for such mobile interventions and teams, provide guidance to the respective local stakeholders on meeting these standards, and facilitate procurement activities, including of third parties as relevant.Sub-component 1.2: Community-based Recovery Activities (Cost: US$151.0 million)This sub-component will finance recovery activities, starting with community planning and consultations and consequent community-focused and community-driven investments in basic services recovery. With regards to community planning, the GoE’s ongoing sub-regional impact assessments will be complemented by project-financed local detailed exercises that will collect, and later keep updated, data on affected communities and households, conflict impacts on household assets, local climate change impacts, and available response services for communities and households, as well as gender-specific assessments. The project will also finance an integrated local conflict-mapping to understand potential tensions among different socioeconomic groups. Where a cluster-approach is taken for geographic targeting, assessments will take into consideration challenges and opportunities for cross-Woreda cooperation. The assessments will be conducted through consultations with local stakeholders and directly inform the consequent development of community recovery plans. Such community recovery plans may also include support for trainings that enable sustainable solutions for return, relocation, and local integration scenarios. The recovery plans will be aligned with the formal development plans of the local government and consultations with relevant government agencies. 53. This local consultation and plan development process will be driven by the beneficiaries, including displaced households and host communities. Learning from the experience of national and international community-driven interventions, such as those funded by the Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP, P152822), the focus of consultations would be on community structures composed of representatives of IDPs and host communities. Such integrative ‘Neighborhood Relations Committees’ will be established where they do not exist or strengthened where they exist by financing goods, training, and incentives for members; with support provided by the Mobile Teams as well as the local government. As necessary, the Mobile Teams may be accompanied by a contracted facilitation agency in the early years of the project, which will train the teams to allow them, in turn, to train local government social workers on community consultation facilitation. The Neighborhood Relations Committees will be representative and diverse, and include men, women, and youth from displaced and hosting communities. Special provisions to enable equitable and inclusive participation will be made to ensure presence and participation of women, youth, and other potentially marginalized groups–including the elderly and persons with disabilities—in community consultations, planning, and decision-making bodies. At the community level, the project will finance the reconstruction of existing community facilities or the construction of new climate-resilient facilities identified in the endorsed community plans (according to the allocated financial envelope), which will be aligned with the formal dev