A coalition of youth advocates has called on governments to prioritise youth inclusion in early warning, risk mitigation and disaster response in a bid to tackle natural disasters in the country.
The representative advocates for 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 Centre 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 Inspirator, ActionAid Nigeria, emphasised youth accounted for more than 65 per cent of the population and called for policymakers to prioritise their safety and inclusion in disaster risk reduction and climate action.
He explained, “We are engaging young people in terms of having synergy between the people in humanitarian development and peace actors, both in the non-profit and profit sectors, to come together and work jointly in terms of preventing not only the flood that ravaged Maiduguri last year but other aspects of natural and anthropogenic disasters by establishing the necessary early warning systems in place and avoiding working in silos.
He pointed out that the population size of young people is a force to be reckoned with. “So whatever the government is doing, engaging young people to ensure that youth are part of the policy for continuity and sustainability. Whatever engagement you are doing is not only to be successful but also 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 and also have responsibility.
“So, it is a collective effort by everybody, because when disaster strikes, it is not only the government that is so fast, but everybody in the society, so we are only complementing 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, build capacity, share knowledge and create 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 the non-profit sector, to ensure that something different is done and to ensure that we’re able to collectively work to prevent our environmental disaster and save the lives 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 understand the idea of what risk mitigation and response are all about. The issue of education can never be emphasised. 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 and CSOs in the state to see how we can build young people’s capacity in terms of responding to natural disasters and then risk mitigation,” she said.
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