Lead­ers from 21 Arab League mem­ber states met in Sweimeh on the Dead Sea coast in Jor­dan for the an­nual sum­mit amid mul­ti­ple chal­lenges in the re­gion in­clud­ing war and drought. The League called for unity to counter “for­eign in­ter­fer­ence” in re­gional wars that dev­as­tate parts of Syria, Yemen and Iraq as the group met on Wednes­day.

The So­mali Pres­i­dent, Mo­hamed Ab­dul­lahi Far­majo told the group of Arab lead­ers that ter­ror­ism was the biggest threat to So­mali sta­bil­ity.

“So­ma­lia faces many chal­lenges, in­clud­ing re­cur­rent droughts and famine, and most atro­cious of all, ter­ror­ism. “

“Ter­ror at­tacks that cause unimag­in­able loss of lives and de­struc­tion of prop­erty is the biggest af­front to progress, sta­bil­ity in So­ma­lia.” The Pres­i­dent went on to say that “Ter­ror­ism is a fast grow­ing tu­mor in al­most all con­ti­nents. Un­for­tu­nately, So­ma­lia had en­dured it longer than the rest.”

So­ma­lia is cur­rently bat­tling Al-Shabaab, an Is­lamist mil­i­tant group that has vowed to fight the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and African Union (AU) troops for con­trol of So­ma­lia. The Al-Qaeda al­lied group has been pushed out of most ma­jor towns for­merly in its con­trol but has been able to launch at­tacks against check­points, ho­tels and other tar­gets with reg­u­lar­ity.

Pres­i­dent Far­majo also used the stage to raise aware­ness for the dras­tic hu­man­i­tar­ian crises fac­ing So­ma­lia, as the wors­en­ing drought is threat­en­ing to plunge the coun­try into a famine – it’s third in a quar­ter cen­tury.

“More than 3M women, chil­dren and el­derly peo­ple face enor­mous risks, if im­me­di­ate sup­port is not ex­tended to them.”

Far­majo at­trib­uted the droughts and deaths to a num­ber of fac­tors in­clud­ing cli­mate change and dried rivers.

“The re­cur­ring droughts is as a re­sult of cli­mate change, failed rains, and dried rivers that has caused famine and the easy spread of deadly dis­eases.” He added that “The drought sit­u­a­tion in So­ma­lia has caused the death of mil­lions of live­stock, thus di­min­ish­ing our strongest eco­nomic main­stay.”

Ac­cord­ing to the FAO, So­ma­lia ex­ports roughly 5.3 mil­lion an­i­mals per year, mak­ing the ex­port of live an­i­mals to Gulf na­tions So­ma­li­a’s lead­ing for­eign ex­change earner.

Pres­i­dent Far­majo said that for So­ma­lia to over­come it’s chal­lenges it needs to have re­al­is­tic plans and “un­yield­ing sup­port from our broth­ers and friends (in the Arab League)”.

The an­nual Arab League sum­mit was capped by a reaf­fir­ma­tion by Arab lead­ers to rally be­hind a two-state so­lu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian-Is­raeli con­flict. amid un­ease over the stance of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.