At the request of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the IFRC’s IDRL Programme Coordinator also joined the team in order to provide advice on legal matters.
Members of the team visited the nation’s three major islands and interviewed over 250 stakeholders in national, insular and local government and civil society.
Among the team’s top recommendations, as reported at a meeting of concerned ministries and non-governmental stakeholders in Moroni on March 12, was that the authorities enact a comprehensive disaster management law addressing a number of issues, including the consolidation of the institutional framework for emergency response and the integration of rules for the facilitation and regulation of external assistance.
The team also drew attention to the key role played by the Comoros Red Crescent Society in community-level disaster response as well as the regional network of communication and pre-positioned relief stockpiles supported by the Red Crescent’s international partners, in particular the French and Canadian Red Cross Societies.
In a written statement, Comoros President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi welcomed the team’s recommendations and pledged that his government would do what was in its power to put them into practice.
In support, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is currently sponsoring a project to help the Comoros authorities develop new disaster legislation along the lines of those recommended in the report.