Londona

11 May 2017

Opening remarks at joint press conference at the London Somalia Conference

António Guterres

Secretary-General’s joint press conference at the London Somalia Conference with Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo, President of the Federal Republic of Somalia

 
Thank you very much first of all, to the Government of the United Kingdom, to Boris Johnson, for having had the initiative of this conference, and to the President of Somalia for having created the political conditions that allowed it to happen.
 
And this conference was an unmitigated success. This conference has created the conditions for an opportunity to materialize. An opportunity that we cannot miss. An opportunity to take Somalia out of decades of conflict, of poverty, and of terrible suffering from Somali people. An opportunity to defeat terrorism and to establish peace. An opportunity to allow for the build up of national Somali institutions and lay the foundations of a normal economic and social development process.
 
And this opportunity is possible because we have in Somalia a President of the Government that has a strategy and a plan of action that makes sense and deserves the support of the international community. But now, for the opportunity not to missed, the international community needs to come together and to massively support Somalia.
 
First of all, responding to the appeals to increase humanitarian aid, to be able to face the dramatic challenge of food and security and disease in the country.
 
Second, to fully support the Government in the build up of national institutions in particular, as it was mentioned by the Foreign Secretary, the national army and the national police force that need to be built in a coordinated way and under the strategy of the Somali Government.
 
The international community needs also to be able - in between, before those national institutions are able to fully protect the Somali people - the international community must give strong and predictable, financial and equipment supports to AMISOM, to the Mission of the African Union, which with enormous sacrifice and enormous courage has been fighting [Al-] Shabaab, in very dramatic circumstances, but creating the conditions that allow this conference and this opportunity to take place.
 
AMISOM deserves a much stronger support and a much more predictable support from the international community.
 
And finally, it is very important for us all to be able to support the new National Development Plan of Somalia - to create the conditions for it to be possible - through all the instruments of development cooperation, including with the necessary technical mechanisms to be put in place and the guarantees of sustainability, including an effective process of debt relief.
If the international community is able to respond to the challenge, I’m sure that this opportunity will not be missed and I’m sure that Somalia will be the success story we need in our troubled world.