Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud on Thursday called on the Somali diaspora and the international community to come to the aid of the people of his country, threatened by famine due to a historic drought hitting the Horn of Africa .
According to the UN, 7.1 million Somalis – almost half the population – suffer from hunger, of which 213,000 are in a “catastrophic and urgent” situation.
“Somalia is vulnerable (…) and there are fears that famine could strike in some areas,” Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud said at his inauguration ceremony, which was attended by several leaders from the region, including the Kenyan Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and Djibouti Omar Ismail Guelleh and Ethiopian Prime Ministers Abiy Ahmed and Egyptian Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli.
“I call on the people of Somalia in the Diaspora and the world to save our people who have been affected by the droughts. The goal must be to prevent the drought from worsening and causing famine,” he said. -he throws.
Noting the recurrence of droughts, interspersed with episodes of flooding, he considered that “these situations are caused by an accumulation of problems, in particular climate change, the destruction of our economic resources and the weakness of our governmental institutions” and announced want to create “an agency for environmental issues”.
In this unstable country with precarious infrastructure, the fight against this devastating drought is complicated by the insurrection of the radical Islamists shebab, whose establishment in vast rural areas of the country limits the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Elected on May 15 for a second term after having been president between 2012 and 2017, Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud spoke of his other priorities, including political “reconciliation” and the economic recovery of the country.
– “Political stability” –
In particular, he pledged to promote “political stability through consultation, mutual approval and unity between (…) the federal government and the federal member states”, taking the opposite view from his predecessor Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo, who had maintained conflicting relations with certain States.
He also said he wanted to set up a “democratic system which guarantees the Somali citizen the right to elect whoever he wants and/or to be elected anywhere in the country”.
Somalia has not held “one person, one vote” elections since 1969, when dictator Siad Barre seized power by force. Somali leaders – representatives of state assemblies, legislators and the president – are currently elected through a complex indirect system.
The international community hailed the election of Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, which marked the end of more than a year of political crisis around the organization of the ballot and diverted the authorities from the fight against Shebab and the drought.
The UN mission in Somalia “congratulated” President Sheikh Mohamoud on Twitter on his inauguration and “looks forward to working with his administration to implement national priorities”.
Despite repeated pleas from aid organizations, only 18% of the estimated $1.5 billion needed to avert a repeat of the 2011 famine that killed 260,000 people.
Source: Seychelles News Agency