• Your Excellency Abdoulkader Houssein Omar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Republic of Djibouti and Chair of the IGAD Council of Ministers;
• Honourable Ministers and Heads of Delegation of IGAD Member States;
• Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Representatives of Partner Institutions;
• Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen;
• Representatives of Regional, Continental and International Organisations, and Members of the Press;
Good morning, and a very warm welcome to Djibouti.
1. I open my remarks with where gratitude is owed. To His Excellency President Ismail Omar Guelleh, and to the Government and people of the Republic of Djibouti, I express the Secretariat’s profound appreciation for the generosity with which this Session has been received, and for four decades of steadfast support as our host. Mr Chairman, thank you for your leadership and for the care with which this meeting has been prepared. I thank all our Member States for the political and diplomatic backing they extend to this Organisation, and for the financial support that sustains it. That support is not a formality; it is what allows a Secretariat of this size to carry a mandate of this weight.
2. We gather here where IGAD was born. Forty years ago, in this city, our founders acted on a single conviction: that the trials of this region could only be mastered together. We return to the birthplace of that conviction, not for ceremony but for decision. This Session is extraordinary in name; let us make it extraordinary in consequence.
3. Permit me a particular word of welcome to the delegation of the Republic of the Sudan, whose resumption of full membership in February restored this family to completeness.
4. The Sudan is a founding Member State of IGAD; its seat at this table strengthens us all. In July I travelled to Khartoum and reopened our Mission there, and it now stands as the standing link between this Organisation and the Government and people of the Sudan.
Excellencies, Honourable Ministers,
5. We meet at a demanding hour, and not only because of what happens within our borders. Wars far beyond our region now reach into our ports, our fuel pumps, our grain markets and our humanitarian budgets. Close to forty-nine million of our people are acutely food insecure, and more than nineteen million are displaced within their own countries. Sudan remains the epicentre of one of the gravest emergencies in the world today. And last week, within sight of this hall, the southern gate of the Red Sea changed hands. Behind each figure stands a mother, a farmer, a child; they are why this Council exists.
6. Yet ours is not a story of despair alone. In the first half of this year, seventy-seven per cent of our priority areas were on track. Our early warning system exceeded its half-year target for decision-support products and underpinned three Election Observation Missions. Our groundwater information system ran at 99.9 per cent availability across more than forty-two thousand monitored wells, springs and dams. Our regional universal health coverage index rose from sixty to sixty-five against a target of seventy for 2027. And anticipatory action frameworks now operate in four of our seven Member States.
7. I congratulate the Republic of Djibouti, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Republic of Uganda on elections held under IGAD observation, and we look with confidence to the Republic of South Sudan as it prepares its polls for December.
8. Fittingly, in this fortieth year the new IGAD Treaty has secured the ratifications it requires, five of our seven Member States having ratified, and we recognise its formal entry into force. The Federal Republic of Somalia joined the African Continental Free Trade Area only days ago. The machinery of cooperation works. What it requires is fuel.
9. As we transition into the new Treaty dispensation, we must ensure this Organisation is well positioned for the chapter ahead. The Treaty is our constitutional foundation, and its success depends ultimately on the ownership and commitment of Member States. Visible commitment from you also strengthens partner confidence and encourages greater support for IGAD. This Organisation has meanwhile upheld the spirit of brotherhood, embracing our diversity and serving every Member State equally, a spirit reflected in the commitment of our staff. This is a moment for all of us to step up and secure IGAD’s future.
10. That brings me to the Secretariat’s duty. Later this morning I will place before you a full and unvarnished report, submitted in two Parts: the first on the state of our region, the second on the institutional condition of this Organisation, its performance and its finances. I will not soften the second Part. The strain is real, it is measurable, and it is also very solvable.
11. I ask this Council for three specific things: stabilise essential operations now, settle historical arrears in an orderly way, and build a financing framework that prevents this recurring.
12. I will also invite us to look forward: to the impending El Niño season, for which preparation must begin before the floodwaters rise; and to a legacy initiative to make our region an author, not a subject, of the age of artificial intelligence.
13. Let me also record the Secretariat’s gratitude to those who stand with us. To the African Union, with whom we share both a mandate and a continent. To the United Nations and its agencies, whose people work alongside ours in the hardest places in this region. To the European Union, our most constant institutional partner across four decades. And to our bilateral partners, whose support has often arrived when little else did. We take none of it for granted, least of all in a year when every partner is making harder choices than before.
14. Excellencies, the peoples of this region have never lacked resilience. What they ask of us is resolve. Let this Session answer them. I have every confidence that, under the guidance of our Chair, it will rise to its moment.
I thank you.
