The Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Workneh Gebeheyu, has promised to work towards ensuring peace and security in the IGAD region.
Gebeheyu, who made the statement in his second ‘State of the Region’ address, said that the weakening of the regional response to Al Shabaab and other terror groups remains of principal concern to IGAD.
The IGAD chief also said that the current conflicts besetting IGAD member states were facilitating the further proliferation of illegal firearms into the region.
He noted that the regional body has been engaging in ‘quiet diplomacy’ to peacefully resolve the situation in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The crisis in Ethiopia started after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional government in Tigray, attacked a key Ethiopian military base in the region.
Data from the United States Department of State shows that Al-Shabab, a terrorist group, still controls significant portions of the country, particularly in south-central Somalia.
Also, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed group based in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and allied to the ISIL group in central Africa, has continued to terrorise some parts of the IGAD region.
In South Sudan – IGAD’s youngest member state – a brutal civil war since 2013 has persisted despite several peace deal and armistice.
‘Already we have documented an increase in the number of terror attacks in Somalia, observed the escape and reapprehension of terror suspects in Kenya’, Gebeheyu said.
‘Most sadly, we witnessed the bombings in Kampala that claimed the lives of innocent people’.
On his plan for the next two years, Gebeheyu said that effective prediction, prevention and response to disasters will be prioritised alongside regional integration.
Source: IGAD
Photo Source: Government of Uganda
