The Sierra Leone Mission in Geneva has over the years striven to actively promote President Julius Maada Bio’s ‘Big Five’ national agenda which seeks investments, capacity building and other opportunities to actualize its manifesto commitments.
The Mission represents Sierra Leone as a strong voice from the Least Developed and Developing World on Internal Disaster, Displacement, Data Collection, Analysis, Socio-Economic, Human Rights, among others.
Since last year, the mission has played pivotal roles in coordinating and facilitating online and in-person meetings with the leadership of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), a Project of the Norwegian Refugee Council, to collaborate with the Government of Sierra Leone to Strengthening Internal Disaster Displacement, Data Collection and Analysis and help Coordinate their proposed visitations in some disaster-prone communities in Sierra Leone.
For 25 years, IDMC has been generating evidence to inform and galvanize action by governments, intergovernmental organizations, and humanitarian and development actors working at the local, national, regional, and global levels to prevent, address and resolve internal displacement linked with conflicts, violence, disasters, or climate change.
The Mission’s Focal Person and the Information Attaché, Mr. Mohamed Sheriff, have played extensive role from the initial stage by engaging the leadership of IDMC that led to a Concept note for potential support from IDMC to the Government of Sierra Leone in preventing and addressing disaster-related internal displacement.
The visitation of Saad Karim, Capacity Strengthening Manager, and Marta Lindström, Capacity Strengthening Coordinator to Sierra Leone from 31st October – 4th November this year would help strengthen the relationship between the two bodies.
On 14th March 2023, IDMC, NaCSA, NDMA held a zoom meeting hosted by His Excellency Lansana Gberie, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva and was agreed that the National Disaster Management Agency to officially write to invite the IDMC to come to Sierra Leone for further engagements on some of the issues discussed during the meeting. This NDMA did promptly.
The IDMC Headquarters in Geneva remain committed to supporting NDMA in its endeavours on strengthening internal disaster displacement, data collection and analysis, according to IDMA Director, Alexandra Bilak.
The IDMC team while in Sierra Leone would engage with Government Institutions as well as UN and NGO partners for potential roles in the data collection on internal displacement linked to disasters in Sierra Leone to identify all existing data sources and methodologies as well as current gaps and opportunities.
According to the Team Leader and Capacity Strengthening Manager, Mr. Saad Karim, the report from the visit would provide a diagnostic with recommendations for future actions to enhance data on internal displacement due to disasters in Sierra Leone.
While in Freetown, the team will meet with the National Commission for Social Action (NaCA), Office of National Security (ONS), Statistics Sierra Leone, Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, and the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Country Planning among others, and some non-government partners such as the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), the Resident Coordinator (UNRCO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Caritas and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
At the Lungi International Airport, the Management of the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) will receive the delegation and will generously facilitates the meetings with State and Non-State Actors.
