- To speak on Peace, Security and Defense
By Vivian C. Iwu
The pioneer Commissioner for Homeland Security and Vigilante Affairs of Imo State, Dr. Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji, has been invited as one of forty-five (45) experts to participate in a United Nations conference billed as "The Africa We Want and the United Nations We Need" dialogue. To be hosted by the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development (SCDDD), the event will take place from March 4 to 6, 2024, at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.
According to the Executive Director of the SCDDD, His Excellency Ambassador Sani Bala, this African Regional Conference "is organized by the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, in conjunction with the Stimson Centre, Washington D.C. The Conference aims to debate and recommend specific and concrete global and regional institutional, policy, legal, normative, and operational innovations that could inform the agenda" of the United Nations as it prepares for the next seventy-five years.
The dialogue seeks to:
●Convene leading policy researchers, practitioners, and advocates, mainly from Africa and around the world, to debate and recommend specific and concrete global and regional institutional, policy, legal, normative, and operational innovations that could inform the agenda and help to raise the ambition of the Summit of the Future , giving special attention to African perspectives and innovation priorities;
●Establish a new platform for African policy researchers and advocates to critically discuss and advance policy research and implementation strategies on “What Africa Wants” and the type of relationship the continent needs to have with the UN and international financial institutions in the next 75 years;
●Strengthen collaboration between the African Union and its RECs and the UN, including through the new Agenda for Peace, Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations.
Given Ugorji's academic and professional expertise in homeland security and peace initiatives, he was invited to participate in the "Peace, Security and Defense" expert panel. He is expected to draw from his experience in Imo State and his scholarship in security studies to articulate an African perspective in the subject areas.
...Vivian C. Iwu is a journalist who writes for the Imo Statesman. She writes from Owerri. NNL.
