Second Consultation on the National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy in Somalia: Launching of the National Platform for DRR

UNDRR ROAS and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in Somalia, in collaboration with the Sadar Development and Resilience Institute, launched the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Somalia during the Second Consultation Workshop on the National DRR Strategy.

The workshop came as part of a series of consultation sessions on developing a national disaster risk reduction strategy that is coherent with climate change and sustainable development policies in Somalia, as well as relevant regional and international policy frameworks.

“The commitment of different ministries and stakeholders towards the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Somalia is essential, along with mainstreaming disaster risk reduction across development sectors and at all levels to achieve long-term resilience and eventually risk-informed sustainable development,” said Sujit Mohanty, Chief of the UNDRR Regional Office for Arab States.

The workshop saw the launching of the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (NPDRR) that will lead and facilitate a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary mechanism for disaster risk reduction and resilience-building with the involvement of all stakeholders at the national level in Somalia.

"The National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Somalia is all-inclusive and not specific to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management. Everyone has a role to play to activate the Platform and achieve its objectives,” said Khadija Mohamed Diriye, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in Somalia.

The NPDRR in Somalia brings together various stakeholders that are responsible for facilitating disaster risk reduction efforts in the country in alignment with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and in coherence with other global frameworks. The NPDRR will operate at two levels: a high-level ministerial steering committee led by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management as the principal institution at the federal level and chair and the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MOAI) as co-chair, and technical working groups/committees to ensure technical coordination among ministries and stakeholders as well as a coherence for the implementation of the technical agendas to support the DRR mandate in the country.

The workshop included presentations and discussions on the current National Disaster Risk Reduction Priorities in Somalia. It addressed the vision, mission, strategic objectives, and areas of intervention of the National DRR Strategy and defined the role of the different stakeholders in developing and implementing the DRR strategy.

Somalia is a hazard-prone and vulnerable country and disaster risk reduction is a cross-cutting complex development issue that requires engagement from all sections of society and institutions, hence this institutional arrangement is required to pull all the knowledge, information, and institutional capacities together in order to facilitate the unified approach for a risk-informed development.

A national disaster risk reduction strategy is essential for implementing and monitoring a country’s risk reduction priorities by setting implementation milestones, establishing key roles and responsibilities of government and non-government actors, and identifying technical and financial resources. Accordingly, UNDRR Capacity Building Programme in Somalia aims to revise the existing National Disaster Management Policy and support the development of an updated National DRR Strategy in line with the Sendai Framework for DRR, the Arab Strategy for DRR 2030, the Africa Programme of Action, and post-2015 global frameworks.

Source: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Arab States