According to the UN, 7.1 million Somalians – almost half of the population – suffer from hunger, of which 213,000 are in a situation “catastrophic and urgent”.
Le Monde with AFP
Somali President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud called on Thursday, June 9, the Somali diaspora and the international community to come to the aid of the population of his country, threatened by famine due to a historic drought that strikes the horn of the ‘ Africa. According to the UN, 7.1 million Somalians – almost half of the population – suffer from hunger, of which 213,000 are in a situation “catastrophic and urgent”.
“Somalia is vulnerable (…) and it is feared that famine will strike in certain regions,” said Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud during his inauguration ceremony, which have attended several managers in the region, including presidents Kenyan Uhuru Kenyatta and Djiboutien Omar Ismail Guelleh and the Ethiopian Prime Ministers Abiy Ahmed and Egyptian Moustafa Madbouli.
“I call the Somali people of the diaspora and the world to save our people who have been affected by droughts. The objective must be to prevent the drought from worsening and provokes a famine”, he launched.
Relating the recurrence of droughts, interspersed with flood episodes, 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 government institutions “And announced that they want to create” an agency for environmental questions “.
In this unstable country with precarious infrastructure, the fight against this devastating drought is complicated by the insurrection of radical Islamists Chabab, whose establishment in large rural areas of the country limits the delivery of humanitarian aid.
One of the priorities: “reconciliation”
Elected May 15 for a second term after being president between 2012 and 2017, Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud spoke of his other priorities, including political “reconciliation” and the country’s economic recovery.
He notably undertook to promote “political stability by consultation, mutual approval and unity between (…) the federal government and the federal member states”, taking the opposite of its predecessor Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as “Farmajo”, who had had 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 who he wants and/or to be elected anywhere in the country”.
Somalia has not held an elections according to the principle of “a person, a voice” since 1969, the year when the dictator Siad Barré took power by force. Somalian leaders – representatives of states assemblies, legislator and the president – are currently elected according to a complex indirect system.
The international community praised the election of Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, who 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 the Chabab and the drought.
The UN mission in Somalia “congratulated” on Twitter President Cheikh Mohamoud for his inauguration and “is delighted to work with his administration to implement national priorities”. Despite repeated calls from humanitarian organizations, only 18 % of the $ 1.5 billion estimated necessary to avoid a 2011 famine rehearsal which had killed 260,000 people.