Youth Advocates Demand Leaders to Prioritize Safety and Inclusion In Disaster Risk Reduction

Speaking during a two-day post-flood youth Dialogue by the Center for Advocacy Transparency and Accountability Initiative (CATAI) in collaboration with ActionAid in Maiduguri, with the theme: Youth Dialogue and learning reviews with Community Disaster Reduction Teams: Post-Flood Reflection and Risk Mitigation Plan Development…..

A coalition of youth advocates has called on governments to prioritize youth inclusion in early warning, risk mitigation and disaster response in a bid to tackle natural disasters in the country.

The representative advocates 20 groups, with stakeholders from different agencies of government, Disaster Reduction teams and Civil society, student groups and young people across the state to demand that each state’s policies and frameworks for implementing disaster risk reduction measures leave no youths behind.

Speaking during a two-day post-flood youth Dialogue by the Center for Advocacy Transparency and Accountability Initiative (CATAI) in collaboration with ActionAid in Maiduguri, with the theme: Youth Dialogue and learning reviews with Community Disaster Reduction Teams: Post-Flood Reflection and Risk Mitigation Plan Development.”

Abdulrasak Abubarkar,  Advocacy and Digital Learning Inspiritor, ActionAid Nigeria, emphasized youth accounted for more than 65 per cent of the population and called for policymakers to prioritize their safety and inclusion in disaster risk reduction and climate action.

He explained, “We engaging young people, in terms of having synergy between the people in humanitarian development and peace actors, both in non-profit and profit sector to come together and work jointly in terms of preventing, not only the flood that has ravaged Maiduguri last year, but other aspects of natural and anthropogenic disaster by establishing the necessary early warning systems in place and avoid working in silos.

He pointed out that the population size of young people is a force to be reckoned with. “So whatever government is doing, engaging young people to ensure that youth part of the policy for continuity and sustainable. Whatever engagement you are doing is not only to be successful, but for sustainability, because skills capacity needs to be transferred from generation to generation, so engagement of young people, I think, is a very good step in terms of achieving the desired result of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy.

Abdulrasak noted that the primary responsibility of the early warning not only lies with the government but also with people in the community who are mostly affected by whatever disaster happens also have responsibility. 

“So, it is a collective effort by everybody, because when disaster strikes, is not only the government that so fast, but everybody in the society so we are only complimenting the effort of the government where necessary, but I think there has been a remarkable improvement in terms of early warning systems compared to what was obtainable in the past,” he disclosed.

Ibrahim Abdulkadir Sabo, Project Coordinator for Strategic Partnership Agreement (CATAI), maintained that the two-day dialogue on post-flood youth response aimed to create awareness, building of capacity, knowledge sharing and synergy among young people and various groups.

“The action plan that will come out from this dialogue will actually become an advocacy point for us to continue to engage stakeholders, both in government and non-profit sector, to ensure that something different is done, to ensure that we’re able to collectively work to prevent our environment disaster  and save the life of people by establishing early warning systems.”

Aisha Abdullahi Izge, Hallmark Leadership Initiative (HALI), said the government should intensify strong communication and awareness on early warning systems and disaster response in the community. 

“We call on the government to put in place early warning mechanisms and disaster responses; it would enable the locals to the idea of what risk mitigation and response is all about. The issue of education can never be emphasized. Young people, children, young women, and girls also need to be educated on certain risk mitigation. So we call on the government to also come together with partners, CSO in the state to see how we can build young people capacity in terms of responding to natural disaster and then risks mitigation.,” she said.