Partnership meeting between IGAD and UNDP

The IGAD Director of Peace and Security, Ambassador Tewolde Gebremeskel and his officers met with Mr Jose Neil Manzano, the UNDP CTA for the IGAD-UNDP project. In attendance were also Nuur Mohamud Sheekh, Senior Humanitarian Advisor and Ms Zainab Mahmoud, Programme Officer with IGAD Mediation Support Unit.

Ambassador Tewolde showed his appreciation for the IGAD-UNDP project and hailed it us one of the best partnerships between a UN agency and IGAD. “UNDP availed its resources to strengthen the capacity of IGAD and its Member States thus helping further IGAD’s regional policy making role and engaging with international policy processes including participation in Paris Climate Conference, Sendai DRR Conference and the World Humanitarian Summit”. He appealed to UNDP to allocate more resources for mediation support, conflict prevention and peace-building, post-conflict reconstruction, and conflict early warning and response.

On his part, Mr. Manzano  expressed appreciation for the support of IGAD and of the excellent partnership demonstrated in the implementation of the IGAD-UNDP Project. Both parties discussed the strengthening of cooperation on peace and security initiatives in the region, including the inclusion of other partners and building on its comparative advantage.

Teams from UNDP and IGAD will continue to work on joint resource mobilization on peace and security in the region