The Gambia National Security Policy was yesterday validated by stakeholders of the security sector at a local hotel in Banjul.
Speaking at the occasion Momodou Badgie, the National Security Adviser to President Barrow said, the government’s intervention in coming up with a National Security Policy (NSP) is indeed timely.
Badgie added that such a comprehensive security policy would compromise not only individual policies, but also integrate major areas in the security sector that would outline national approach to peace and stability.
“The National Security Policy (NSP) would help the government to have a more structured and define approach, response system and measures to be taken as a nation to provide security, ” the National Security Adviser disclosed.
Noting that the NSP will contribute to the creation of a capable, accountable and effective security sector and will be a clear policy environment that interconnect peace, security and development and also will strengthen efforts at mainstreaming peace building into development initiatives.
Badgie further revealed that, the NSP validation rest on major objectives such as giving stakeholders the opportunity to cross check various issues and inputs from the national consultation, discussing the draft policy, provide technical and expert inputs to enrich the draft give recommendations and make proposals on action and partnership needed to implement the NSP.
Badgie did not left out what he called some immediate steps that are required to make the whole exercise of the NSP a success.
According to him, there should be an executive bill that will address the gaps and issues such as nomenclature as well as issues of mandates and functions of some security institutions and the chain of command of certain institutions should be revisited.
“The next step from the validation is to enrich the NSP document for it to reflect the current realities of the Gambian situation,” Badgie highlighted, saying the National Security Policy has been bankrolled and supported by the government of The Gambia, UN, ECOWAS, EU, US, DCAF among others.
Author: Kebba Ansu Manneh