EWER: Building Community Resilience Should be Prioritised – Experts
Experts have stated that as disasters and other threats become increasingly common, especially those occasioned by climate change, increasing globalization, and urbanization, hence, building resilience has become imperative to enhance communities’ adaptation and coping capacity in the face of difficulty and adversity.
They made this revelation at the end of the second Community Security Architecture Dialogue on Early Warning and Early Response (EWER).
The event was organised by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)/Transparency International in Nigeria with support from Open Society Foundation Africa (OSF-Africa).
The dialogue aimed at strengthening local participation and expand community-based early warning and early response network and system.
The experts observed that “While the recently promulgated financial autonomy for Local Governments provides enabling opportunity for enhanced Community Security Architecture system, institutionalising proactive transparent and accountability mechanisms have become imperative for impactful implementation.”
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“Unregulated movements of locally-fabricated weapons coupled with poorly controlled illicit ammunition, exacerbate community susceptibility to threats, while hampering their coping capacity.”
“Lack of synergy, duplicated institutions with over-lapping mandates hinder adequate resource allocation and capacity to facilitate rapid response to reported threats.”
“Poor accountability of the implementation of Security Vote constitutes a major barrier to anticipated effort at bridging the gaps in resource allocation to strengthen Early Warning/Early Response system at sub-national levels.”
In there recommendations, the experts suggested the following measures:
. Building community resilience through social connectedness and disaster preparedness to promote various systems that contribute to community’s overall health.
. Strengthening the capacity of community management and securing communal resolution/buy-in to promote efficient operationalisation of Community Security Architecture system.
. Enhancing community sensitisation on EWER with training and retraining programmes for response institutions to building synergy in reporting and response to threats.
. Promoting inclusive participation in Community Security Architecture system and dialogues, to harness communal support for efficient functionality of Early Warning and Early Response structure.
. Creating a Community-based Peace Initiative to uphold monthly security dialogue on threat signals, while eliciting timely response.
