The government of the Federal Republic of Somalia has signed the Treaty and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the African Risk Capacity (ARC) to work together towards helping the country better prepare, plan and respond to extreme weather events and natural disasters.
The ARC Treaty and MoU were signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by Khadija Mohamed Diriye, the country’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs & Disaster Management.
Senior Communications Officer at African Risk Capacity, Chinedu Moghalu, in a statement said Somalia’s exposure to both drought and flood risks further threatens the national economy; requiring pre-emptive disaster risk reduction strategies to improve multi-hazard early warning, preparedness, and national coordination for disaster response.
According to the statement, in this context, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs & Disaster Management initiated an engagement with ARC in September 2018 to explore ways of diversifying existing disaster risk management approaches, particularly, through a sovereign and parametric insurance mechanism.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Federal Republic of Somalia, Khadija M Diriye, said that ”Somalia’s hazard profile is dominated by droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, desert locust, diseases (epidemic/pandemic), and terrorism that disrupt people’s livelihoods, destroy the infrastructure, divert planned use of resources, interrupt economic activities and retard development.” Increasingly, it is recognized that hazards are linked.
