Protracted complex emergencies and natural disasters, including drought, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires, present significant challenges to vulnerable populations in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia (EMCA). Between FY 2009 and FY 2018, USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) and USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (USAID/FFP) provided assistance in response to a range of disasters, including complex emergencies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen; earthquakes in Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkey; floods in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Tunisia; and fires in Canada, Israel, Montenegro, Portugal, and Russia.
Between FY 2009 and FY 2018, USAID provided more than $8 billion for emergency response programs in EMCA. USAID/FFP assistance included more than $4.4 billion for food and nutrition assistance, including U.S. in-kind food aid, locally or regionally purchased food, cash transfers for food, food vouchers, the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, and related activities such as community-asset building. USAID/OFDA assistance included nearly $3.6 billion for agriculture and food security, health, livelihoods, nutrition, protection, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions, as well as support for humanitarian coordination and logistics and the provision of relief commodities.
In the last decade, USAID responded to approximately 80 disasters in EMCA and deployed humanitarian teams to the region, including four Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs). Escalated conflict in Syria prompted USAID to stand up a DART in FY 2013, and a DART deployed to Iraq in the wake of deteriorating security that prompted significant population movement in FY 2014; both DARTs remained active throughout FY 2018. In addition, USAID deployed DARTs to Israel in repsonse to wildfires and Libya in response to a complex emergency in FY 2011. During the past ten years, USAID activated multiple Washington, D.C.-based Response Management Teams to facilitate DART coordination and response efforts.
