AU seeks strategies to cut road accidents on convoys in Somalia

The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has called for strategies to reduce road traffic accidents involving its personnel in the Horn of Africa nation.

AMISOM said it convened a meeting in Mogadishu this week which discussed ways of reducing the number of civilian casualties in road accidents involving AMISOM convoys.

"It is for that reason that this workshop was organized so that stakeholders can come together and look at the root causes of these accidents and also find workable solutions to reduce future occurrences," Colonel Ali Nouhou, AMISOM Chief of J7 Training said in a statement on Saturday.

During the meeting, participants discussed the implications of civilian casualties from a reputational, legal, investigatory and compensatory perspective.

The delegates also identified the common causes of road accidents and also proposed recommendations on how to tackle the problem.

The common causes of accidents in AMISOM area of responsibility, participants noted, include reckless driving, human error, use of defective vehicles and lack of traffic signs and traffic officers at road intersections.

Other causes identified include poor road infrastructure - narrow, uneven, underdeveloped roads - poor understanding of traffic rules and unattended livestock on the roads.

"Some of the solutions proposed by participants are the creation of a road traffic management body to regulate motorists and pedestrians, communication campaign targeting road users, installation of road traffic signs, training Somali traffic police officers and ensuring the licensing of drivers," the AU mission said.

The workshop was attended by stakeholders in AMISOM operations in Somalia, unified under the Civilian Casualty Tracking, Analysis and Response Cell (CCTARC).

They included officers from transport, legal, operations, civil-military coordination departments in all the Mission's sectors.

The Civilian Casualty Tracking, Analysis and Response Cell (CCTARC) is a unit mandated to track and capture incidents and events involving civilian casualties in AMISOM areas of operation.

The unit is currently coming up with strategies of reducing traffic accidents as a means of mitigating the loss of civilian lives.

source: Xinhua