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Mali: ECOWAS reaffirms commitment to assist Mali

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Source: ECOWAS
Country: Mali

ECOWAS will continue to offer humanitarian assistance to Mali, especially the population affected by the country’s recent multi-dimensional crises, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Social Affairs and Gender, Dr. Fatimata Dia Sow, has said in Bamako.

Addressing participants on 13th February 2014, at a Post-deployment workshop for ECOWAS Emergency Response Team (EERT) in Mali, the Commissioner said the ECOWAS Commission would continue to work with the Malian Government and international partners to assist the population.

The three-day workshop involved the debriefing of the 19 EERT members deployed to Mali to support rehabilitation of the country’s essential services and provision of assistance to the people affected by the security and political crises.

The EERT members from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Niger, Senegal and Togo were deployed in Mali in November 2013, under the regional humanitarian support mechanism to Member States.

The Emergency Intervention team created through the ECOWAS Council of Ministers’ decision of 2008 comprises a network of rapid intervention experts in support of Member States severely affected by natural disasters or crises.

The team deployed in Mali, as the first of its kind by the Community, was made up of medical doctors, policemen, lawyers, experts in refugee matters, as well as firemen or engineers, who were given intensive training organized by the ECOWAS Commission in collaboration with United Nations agencies.

The team members served in Bamako, Gao, Mopti and Timbuktu as well as the local offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Red Cross.

Commissioner Sow said “the initiative to develop an effective regional capacity that can provide humanitarian services to needy people in the ECOWAS region is essential,” adding that “the most important point is that members of the EERT are available for their national governments and constitute an important asset for disaster affected countries and communities.”

The ECOWAS Commission, she said, is not only working towards enhancing the team’s efficiency in subsequent deployments, but is also committed to “improving its overall humanitarian strategy” within the framework of implementing its humanitarian policy adopted in 2012 by the Authority of Heads of State and Government.

The OCHA representative, Mr. Lucien Simba expressed satisfaction with the success of the EERT deployment, which he called “a noble mission,” and reaffirmed the commitment of his organization to engage in similar projects with ECOWAS to help reduce the risks of natural or man-made disasters in the region.

The UNHCR Resident Representative, Mrs. Antoinette Okimba Bousquet, also commended the mission, which she said had enabled ECOWAS and UN agencies to pool efforts in assisting disaster-afflicted populations. She, however, expressed the hope that more time would be allocated to similar missions in the future, with proper definition of the legal relationship between the partners and the deployed experts.

Mr. Amadou Rouamba, Secretary-General in Mali’s Ministry of Labour, Social and Humanitarian Affairs, who chaired the session, noted that the military, security and political instability experienced by his country between March 2012 and August 2013, had led to the breakdown of national institutions and mass exodus of Malians in the Northern region to some neighbouring countries.

He expressed the country’s gratitude for the international support and solidarity and congratulated the EERT for a job well done.

The Bamako workshop was to debrief the stakeholders including ECOWAS, the Government of Mali, UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations, with a view to drawing key lessons from the mission.

The aim was also to identify the achievements, gaps and challenges of the exercise, evaluate the attainment of specific objectives set for the experts, and to examine the administrative and operational issues accompanying document and the EERT field procedures.

It is expected that the meeting will lead to an improvement of Member States’ services and participation, define EERT training requirements and promote closer field collaboration between Member States and partners.

According to UNHCR statistics, Mali has some 18,451 refugees and asylum seekers of different nationalities. Following the crises, some 254,822 persons were forced to flee their homes in the North to the South of the country, while another 167,927 took refuge in neighbouring countries such as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger.

But with the ECOWAS-led regional intervention supported by the international community, internally displaced persons have gradually started returning to their homes, while some 18,000 refugees have returned from the four neighbouring countries to Mali.

The ECOWAS Commission has also rendered humanitarian assistance to Burkina Faso and Niger through cash donations of 4.5 billion US dollars for the purchase of food and non-food items as well as the provision of 410 tons of rice valued at 500,000 dollars to assist populations affected by the Mali crises.


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