Abstract

Disaster risks management policy framework and action undertaken significantly influence disaster resilience capacities of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities of the lower Omo Valley region. This was widely hindered by the government’s inability to take effective infrastructural, institutional, social, and economic measures in response to its critical function at the desired level when the lower Omo Valley Dassenech rural communities were exposed to the Omo River flooding disaster. This article aims to explore and investigate the impacts of disaster risk management policies and strategies on building disaster-resilient pastoralist and agro-pastoralist Dassenech communities. Throughout the study, the researcher employed an interpretativist epistemological paradigm. Consequently, the study’s findings reveal that the existing policy framework overlooks the pastoral and agro-pastoral concerns associated with the recurring occurrence of the Omo River flooding disaster in the area. Therefore, building disaster-resilient pastoral and agro-pastoral communities has a substantial impact on the realisation of effective disaster risk management while ensuring sustainable socio-economic development in the lower Omo Valley southern regions of the country.