It is a great honour and privilege to address the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session here in New York today.
At this particularly challenging time in human history, I welcome the important theme of this session, which directs us all to jointly find transformative solutions to the various interlocking challenges that
we face today. There is absolutely no doubt that we, as a community of nations, now collectively face the most challenging socioeconomic and environmental situation we have experienced in modern history. In fact, I can say with sadness that the situation is dire and potentially existential.
Therefore, without transformative and urgent implementable solutions to those interlocking challenges of our time, the small window of opportunity we have to act together will pass, to the detriment of all our citizens and to the world. Our actions today will surely determine our fate and that of the generations to come. The burden on all of our shoulders is heavy and failure is not an option.
Most of the world is still recovering from the devastating health and socioeconomic impact of the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic was unprecedented in its impact on the daily lives of all citizens across the world. It has changed the ways in which we live forever and clearly presented how unprepared the world is for such shocks and disruptions.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has painfully illustrated how far apart the world is in terms of development and its ability to respond to such a huge crisis through the top-down distribution of the vaccines. Richer nations were able to invest in the distribution of life-saving vaccines more rapidly for their citizens, while developing countries like Somalia waited for whatever was available and whatever they could afford or were gifted by international partners.
While vaccine inequality is symbolic of the existing development divide between the developed and the developing world, we, as a community of nations, understood that we can and must stand together to overcome even the greatest challenges if we have a strong global system of cooperation, collaboration and action. In that regard, the Somali Federal Government is grateful to all the dedicated medical professionals on the front lines against COVID-19, as well as those bilateral and multilateral partners that have supported our national efforts to vaccinate our people and provide protection for their livelihoods through the difficult COVID-19 crisis.
Today we must ensure that the global inequality of the COVID-19 vaccine is not replicated with the looming food security crisis. Our world is becoming less secure through recurring conflict, increasing international terrorism and the destructive impact of the climate change. I cannot prioritize between those three interlocking challenges, because they are equally dangerous and directly harmful to any progress we make, anywhere in the world, on achieving the vital Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
In fact, those complex and interconnected crises are the drivers of today’s unprecedented international humanitarian crises, food insecurity, rapid urbanization and the burdensome international cost of the livelihood crisis, which is pushing most of the world’s population into poverty. Indeed, we are at an unbearable juncture in human history, where citizens are looking to their respective Governments and the international multilateral system to provide meaningful policy responses that are anchored in transformative and sustainable solutions. Accordingly, we, as a community of nations, must be more optimistic and work even more closely together instead of retreating into nationalistic isolation, which cannot and will not serve our global citizenry in this new age of interconnectivity and interdependence.
In Somalia, we are working tirelessly to transition from over two decades of devastating conflict, drought, famine and development stagnation to a new age of stability, progress and prosperity. However, despite our continuing efforts, Somalia and its resilient people are facing some of the most complex and interconnected crises in the world. Those crises include ongoing regional drought, which is directly threatening the lives and livelihoods of Somalia’s most vulnerable communities. In fact, our Government has called on all its business community, diaspora and international partners on to work with us to do everything possible to avert the possible looming famine. We urge all our partners to heed our call and work with us to provide immediate support and relief to the most affected communities.
In the long term, we must collectively work together to ensure that we mitigate the acceleration of the dangerous and costly climate crisis by meeting the commitment to investing in and adequately financing climate adaptation in the most affected and vulnerable regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa. Key areas of investment must be sustainable water management, biodiversity protection to enhance food security, climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure and greater investment in renewable energy.
In Somalia, for the first time, we have established a new Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to lead the urgent process of addressing the devastating impact of our national and regional environmental deterioration. Somalia is caught between floods and droughts annually, owing to climate change and poor infrastructure. Our people, who have a long tradition of living harmoniously with nature and who barely contribute to the poisonous emissions warming the Earth, are the ones paying with their lives today.
We are therefore taking the matter of protecting our environment seriously because we know that climate change is real. We are living with the evidence of its painful and destructive reality today. We also know that Somalia and the rest of the world cannot develop sustainably without jointly addressing the global climate crisis quickly and effectively, because our whole way of life and the most important job- creating productive sectors of our economy, including agriculture, livestock, fisheries and the wider blue economy, depend on the climate.
Terrorists are making our word less safe by the day. Terrorism remains a persistent and complex challenge that both contributes to and exacerbates all other crises, including food insecurity, the displacement of people from their homes and climate change. Terrorists have no religion or human values. They are violent criminals who simply seek to terrorize innocent people. We must continue to stand up to them with all our collective strength and effort. Nowhere in the world has there been an example of a terrorist organization succeeding against a united Government and people, let alone governing justly, as may be falsely claimed.
The most important lesson we have learned in the long modern war against international terrorists and terrorism is that neither can be contained or degraded. They need to be comprehensively defeated, wherever they exist. In Somalia, we are actively fighting the terrorist group called Al-Shabaab, which is an affiliate of Al-Qaida, and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham, separately. Both criminally misrepresent the beautiful and peaceful Islamic religion and values to destabilize the region and, in the process, terrorize the Somali people and their brothers and sisters in neighbouring countries and across the world.
In recent weeks, the unprovoked, violent and senseless actions of Al-Shabaab against innocent civilians across Somalia have highlighted the urgent need for an expedited common national and international response to defeating the group, on a permanent basis, to advance regional and global security. At the height of the humanitarian crisis, the group, which falsely claims to be Islamic, blew up desperately needed water wells and water catchment areas, banned transportation carrying food and killed innocent people, who were already struggling to live because of the impact of the severe drought in our country today. That is the true criminal and despicable face and intentions of terrorists and terrorism.
On its part, the Somali Federal Government and its federal member states, with the direct support of our brave and resilient people, are responding by challenging and defeating the remaining terrorist groups in major localities. The Somali people have begun to organically rise up in support of their Government’s call to free themselves and their nation from the evils of terrorism. As recently as this past month, more towns and villages were recovered as a result of our offensive military operations, with the support of local communities. We are now confident that with enhanced public support, our Government will eliminate terrorism from Somalia because the Somali people have finally realized that Al-Shabaab’s repressive actions will not end until we all take action to achieve that. In a nutshell, the Somali people now believe that Al-Shabaab can and will be defeated, and that is our real source of energy and inspiration, as a Government in the fight against international terrorism.
At the policy level, the Somali Government will continue to work with all its partners, including the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, in the fight against global terrorism. We are fully committed to doing the heavy lifting to secure our future. However, to deliver the killer blow to the violence and insecurity, we must think past the notion of containing and degrading Al-Shabaab or any other terrorist organization, anywhere in the world.
We know that those policies are no longer as effective as they were once thought to be at this advanced stage in the fight against the ever-evolving global terrorism threat. Instead, we need to focus all our joint efforts on the Somali Government’s new strategy of militarily, ideologically and financially challenging terrorism and terrorists to ensure that they are comprehensively defeated, once and for all and quickly. Furthermore, the Somali Government is sincerely committed to working with all its partners to effectively train, equip and sustain its armed forces, with a view to moving forward
fully. That is the only long-term sustainable solution for stability and progress in our country, the region and the world at large. The Somali Government is working within a complex network of challenges that include the effects of climate change and poverty.
Without predictable and committed national and international financing, it will not be possible to find transformative solutions to the interlocking challenges we face today. In Somalia, we are working to enhance our economic capacity through a rigorous economic and financial reform programme that will strengthen Somalia’s economy, improve public financial management and mobilize more urgently needed domestic resources to ensure a more sustainable and swift response to the crisis.
We are very grateful to international financial organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which support Somalia in implementing real economic and financial reform. However, given Somalia’s fragile economic situation as a recovering post-conflict State, the financing of global development priorities must be underpinned by a common international commitment to supporting countries like ours with more concessionary financing, capacity-building and investment in all areas that can strengthen resilience to today’s multiple crises, including climate change, insecurity and the provision of social protection for the most vulnerable in our societies.
We must also facilitate and promote private sector investment and participation in overcoming those challenges to transition from what is now simply referred to as a corporate social responsibility to common social prosperity, in which we all contribute our fair share. Our Government must facilitate and improve further the enabling environment necessary for that private investment.
In conclusion, there is no escaping the vicious cycle of complex and interconnected global crises, which challenges our citizens and the wider world. What is even more worrisome is that they have become repetitive, and without strong bilateral, multilateral civil society and private sector partnerships, they cannot be addressed effectively anywhere or by any single nation or geographic region alone.
In the absence of urgent and effective joint action starting today, the dream of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will remain just that — a mere distant dream. For its part, the Somali Government is committed and determined to defeat international terrorism alongside all its international partners, address extreme poverty, raise the environmental consciousness of our population, mitigate the worst of the climate change impact and rebuild an inclusive, resilient and people-centred society and economy through our successful ongoing socioeconomic reform programme. That is the basis for the transformative solutions that will help us mitigate and overcome the interlocking challenges that our nations face today and pave the way for future progress and prosperity.
The most important lesson we have learned from dealing with the multiple, complex and interconnected crises in Somalia is that we must not always be behind, but must plan for and respond to the worst emergencies. When we have many early national and international warning systems in place, it is better and more prudent to plan ahead and focus on building resiliency by finding and financing durable solutions that help to deliver sustainable development for the most vulnerable across the world. In Somalia, we have a wise saying that one finger cannot wash your whole face. If we work together sincerely and collaboratively as a community of nations, no challenge, no matter how big it is, is insurmountable.