Somalia frequently suffers from chronic human-made and natural disasters that occur periodically over a period of time. These disasters are different such as tsunami coastal flooding, drought, famine, river flooding, wars, pandemics, seasonal coastal flooding, and extremist terror attacks. In our country, catastrophic disasters cause health impacts and widespread loss of human lives, property, economic, and environmental damages.
Every time a disaster happens it destroys habitats and disrupts services, social and economic livelihoods. The impact of the loss often exceeds the ability of the affected community to cope using its own resources. When the disaster impacted to cause a high number of fatalities and widespread destruction, the Somali government at all levels gets overwhelmed, and that induced failure to introduce appropriate emergency management measures. In this regard, we learned a lesson from the 14th October 2017 extremist terror attack that killed over a thousand people and destroyed property and economic hub at the center of Zope area in Km 5 at South Mogadishu.
We also as well remember the helplessness of about a hundred thousand Somali people who were died due to the widespread pandemic of COVID-19 that strick in our country. The failure of the Somali government to preplan effectively the disaster and absorb the shock of the disaster is combined with insufficient budgetary allocation for disaster prevention and management that escalated both the frequency and severity of the disasters.
Unfortunately, the worst breach of integrity and unethical misappropriations always happen in the face of disasters. Regardless of how the government tightly controlled the information of foreign aid donation mismanagement, the society induces to expose great extension of corruption that burdens to impede impacting individuals and communities from receiving the assistance they need. We will implement one of our most important national security strategies that protect the well-being of the Somali people, the homeland, and the Somali way of life and livelihood which in turn supports the nation’s ability to quickly recover from catastrophic disasters. We will promptly provide professional emergency management across the nation to drive a framework for supporting people and the country before, during, and after disasters. The following strategic policies are steps we plan to make perfection for delivering promises of national preparedness for responsible emergency management:
 Establishing a national emergency management agency that is responsible for emergency preparedness, risk assessment, and mitigation investments
 Practicing an ideal leading role of the agency to build relationships with all emergency management partners to coordinate response to disasters in partnership with the affected local emergency responders and to assist efficiently the impacted communities recover resilience
 Deploying a capable national incident workforce that can engage the ability to communicate and coordinate effectively in every situation
 Reducing the administrative and bureaucratic burdens that slow the quick responses of better engagement and support for the disaster survivors
 Preventing disasters with forecast and broadcasting warning recommendations to prepare people to act quickly and decisively before they face disaster, thereby reducing death toll and injuries, loss of property, and allowing impacted communities for a more rapid and efficient recovery
 Enhancing supportive strategic objectives that can focus stewardship of funds and building trust to impede mismanagement and induce corruption-free practices
 Adopting a strategic goal of building on the preparedness that focuses on enhancing our collective readiness and deploying greater integration with our partners at all levels
 Preventing river floods in part by allocating more wetlands that act as buffer zones for seasonal river floods and as well as building all necessary infrastructure to manage at a secure level to water current in the rivers
 Inducing changes in social life in coastal areas that frequently happen chronic seasonally and tsunami floodings by organizing Eastern coastal communities’ capabilities to be fully prepared, and as well as to combine with their efforts of preparedness to follow
recommended alerts of effective communication for upcoming disaster prevention
 Fortifying coral reefs infrastructure to reduce Eastern coastal communities facing an existential crisis as a result of seasonal strong monsoon storms that result in severe coastal flooding
Prof. Said Isse Mohamud
Chairman of the People’s Party and
a candidate for the presidency of Somalia
