Bassirou Diomaye Faye at the Dakar Forum on Peace and Security: "Sovereignty does not mean isolation, but…"

President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye called for collective action against terrorism on Monday, April 20. Presiding over the 10th Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa, held at the Abdou Diouf International Conference Center (CICAD), he stated: “It is important to talk, but also to engage with other stakeholders, particularly families and schools. What also concerns us is how to structure this discourse on social media. We must develop effective communication mechanisms there so that recruitment efforts do not overshadow the population's aspirations for peace, especially those of young people, who remain the most vulnerable.”

Within the institutional framework, both at the sub-regional and continental levels, President Diomaye Faye stated that "we have early warning mechanisms that we need to activate and make fully operational. The framework for designing, discussing, and analyzing both the causes and solutions to threats against peace and security is now clearly established."

Within the ECOWAS region, he continued, "the standby force has been planned for several years, but its activation is still pending. Yet, it should constitute an effective response to the phenomenon of terrorism in the various countries."

"It is therefore time to move from discourse and design to the operationalization of solutions, in a concerted and united approach. For we must recognize that the world, and particularly Africa, shares a common security destiny," he notes.

Then he will say: “There can be no effective responses if each country retreats into itself. Sovereignty does not mean isolation, but rather the ability to make sovereign choices and define one's priorities, while collaborating with others. This implies pooling resources, strategies, and intelligence in order to anticipate crises and better respond to terrorist attacks and other threats that we are increasingly facing.”