Somalia controbutes to the development of the Horn and Eastern Africa Regional Strategy for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE)

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Addis Ababa, 26 July 2016 – Somalia has shared its experience, knowledge and views to IGAD member states plus Tanzania as the Horn and Eastern Africa plans to develop a Regional Strategy for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE). Since Somalia has already developed an inclusive process to devise a comprehensive national P/CVE strategy, Hon Mustafa Duhulow, CVE Coordinator said that Somalia is ready to make valuable contributions to the Horn and Eastern Africa countries and urged the importance of a wide consultations to all stakeholders in order to ensure that all seven IGAD member states plus Tanzania are fully consulted before the draft of the strategy.

IGAD yesterday launched in Addis Ababa, the process of development of Horn and Eastern Africa Regional Strategy for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism. The 3 days consultation (25, 27 July 2016) event was attended by representatives from the seven IGAD member states plus Tanzania, Japan Ambassador and as well as representatives from donor community and UNDP.

Representatives from Somalia presented the strategic approaches that resulted in the completion of Somalia’s comprehensive P/CVE Strategy that came as a result of an inclusive process with all stakeholders including representatives from government institutions and all segments of the society such as civil society groups. For the last 10 months Somalia went a rigorous process that ensured to take account of inputs from segments of the society well before the draft of the national P/CVE strategy. Organizers and representatives from IGAD countries and Tanzania praised the efforts of Somalia.

Hon Mustafa Duhulow, CVE Coordinator for Somalia thanked IGAD, UNDP and Japan for the opportunities that is provided to countries in the region and said “We cannot thank enough for organizers of today’s event, as the issue of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) is a global phenomena it is the right approach to work together in order to share experiences, ideas, diverse views so that we together can tackle this phenomena and find the appropriate solutions to bring peace and stability in the region.

“Somalia is ready to share its experience in developing a national comprehensive P/CVE strategy that addresses local grievances, root causes and drivers of violent extremism as well as on how to really conduct an inclusive process that listens and takes account of local communities’ concerns. We can also share our experiences in developing an action plan that meets the higher expectations from citizens. We are also happy that we were given an opportunity to learn from other countries’ experiences as we need to collectively work in this issue in order to find a global solution to the phenomena of violent extremism.”

P/CVE Coordinators from IGAD member states and Tanzania plus Independent Consultants will be part of the wider consultation processes that will visit each country to practically see first hand on how these countries are dealing with the issue of violent extremism. The consultation process will be finalized by September and a P/CVE Strategy for the Horn and Eastern Africa regions will be developed taking into account on all the inputs from each country of the region, as the CVE Centre for excellence in Djibouti will implement the P/CVE Strategy.