Your questions answered

In addition to Zamzam Foundation’s extensive programmes to alleviate poverty and build self-reliance, we have an increasingly prominent presence on the international stage. ZZF works with its international partners to promote solutions to Somalia’s challenges, contributing to UN summits such as the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) climate conference and other major events that shape the global landscape in international aid and development. The shared aim of ZZF and ZZF UK is to be an increasingly influential voice internationally, speaking up in support of positive change in areas that are critical for a more prosperous and peaceful future.

Zamzam Foundation uses the platform it has through partnerships with influential agencies and donors, as well as its attendance at UN summits and other major events, to make the case for positive change in a number of important areas:

• Pressing for more and better targeted international aid and investment
• Campaigning for climate justice, including climate finance from richer countries to compensate for the loss and damage in poorer countries caused by carbon emissions elsewhere
• Championing women’s education and economic empowerment
• Promoting joined-up ‘triple nexus’ programmes that integrate aid and development with peacebuilding to deliver longer-lasting change
• Arguing for effective ‘localisation’ and greater local accountability to put more power and resources in the hands of Somali communities and organisations.

Somalia is ranked as the most climate-vulnerable nation on earth by ND-GAIN, which bases its rankings on the vulnerability of six life-supporting sectors in every country – food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habit and infrastructure. The country’s comparatively modest carbon emissions were 43.6 million tonnes in 2020 and its per-capita emissions 2.74 tonnes, indicating that the average US citizen produced more emissions than six individuals in Somalia. Somalia is an acute example of what climate injustice looks like. We must ensure that the poorest countries worst affected by climate change and yet least responsible for the emissions causing it can get more help from the biggest polluters to build more resilient infrastructure, agriculture and livelihoods in the face of increasing extremes of heat, heavy rainfall, drought and floods.

Women and girls are at the centre of all Zamzam’s programmes in Somalia. In taking practical action to empower women and girls, ZZF and ZZF UK are investing in those who often need our support the most and yet are also a source of enormous strength and potential for building resilient communities. We believe much more needs to be done by the international community, by aid donors and by our own communities to protect women and girls and empower them educationally and economically. In Somalia we know it is women who are most likely to miss out on education, most likely to die prematurely because of inadequate healthcare, most reliant on subsistence farming for their livelihoods, most responsible for finding and fetching water, most likely to be displaced and left caring for children on their own because of conflict and climate change.

There has often been a lot of talk about localisation in the global aid community but relatively little action. In 2016 donors pledged through the Grand Bargain agreement to spend 25 per cent of global aid budgets on local organisations by 2020 and yet by 2021 the real amount reaching local groups was still only 2.1 per cent. Zamzam Foundation and we at ZZF UK applaud donors like the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which is ensuring that 43 per cent of its support for the Building Resilient Communities in Somalia initiative (BRCIS) is being channelled through Somali organisations like Zamzam. ZZF in Somalia was a member of the working group on inclusive decision making set up by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Council for Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) as part of their Joint Pledge on Advancing Localisation. As a member of the Somali NGO Consortium’s localisation committee, ZZF in Somalia is strongly backing the collaborative implementation of Somalia’s localisation framework for 2024-28.