Garowe, December 17: The Media Association of Puntland (MAP) in partnership with Free Press Unlimited (FPU) has concluded today in Garowe a 2-day multi-stakeholder forum on disaster risk management.
Held at the dream-point conference facility, the event was attended by DRM state and non-state actors including Ahmed Jama the planning director of Garowe’s local government, Abdikarim aden – Garowe’s focal person of the DRM Unit, representatives from the Puntland’s Ministry of environment, DRM reporters, and some of the MAP executive committee members.
In his openning remarks, MAP’s head, Mohamed Dahir, stated that “encouraging disaster resilience is and should be everybody’s business.” “Through integrated approaches, we must effectively reduce and manage disaster risk by coming up with helpful and innovative solutions.” “MAP definitely aims to provide a platform for discussion such as this multi-stakeholder engagement to strengthen cooperation among DRM stakeholders while also injecting the media role in contributing to efforts directed towards disaster risk management.”
During the discussions at the forum participants underlined that recent catastrophes in Puntland and Somalia at large and indeed have highlighted the importance of working together in order to foresee, reduce, and recover from the repercussions of both natural and man-made threats.
The forum was crucial to building relations between state actors and CSO groups the fact that most of them were meeting for the first time despite the critical role they all play on DRM.
At the end, the forum called for an improvement towards the approach to properly incorporate citizens in DRM procedures, moreso in a collective action-encouraging strategies and protocols.
The DANWADAAG (DW) initiative, which hosted the multi-stakeholder meeting, aims to increase government legitimacy by promoting efficient and effective disaster risk management (DRM) based on information availability, inclusive policies, and services.
Outcome 4 of the program, as executed by MAP in Puntland, aims to expand media participation in disseminating important DRM information to all stakeholders. The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nairobi is funding the project, which runs from January 1, 2021 to March 31, 2025.
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