Wrong understanding of conflict leads to wrong actions – Prof Marfo

Professor Samuel Marfo, a Prof. of Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development (SDD-UBIDS), has underscored the need for conflict mediators to properly understand conflicts before initiating any actions to resolve them.

According to Pro. Marfo, who is also a Member of the Upper West Regional Peace Council, any wrong understanding of conflict will lead to the initiation of wrong actions that would escalate the conflict rather than resolve it.

Prof. Marfo was facilitating a community sensitization programme at Kunchogu in the Sissala East Municipality of the Upper West Region titled the “Atlantic Corridor Project: Promoting Community Dialogues and Community Peace Committees to Strengthen Social Cohesion and Reduce Vulnerabilities to Violent Extremism”.

The project is being sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and implemented by the National Peace Council.

The Prof. of Peace and Conflict Resolution said, to properly understand a conflict, one must learn to see or view the situation from different angles and lenses.

“Different people observe things differently and that is why we have conflicts which is normal, but the fact we see things differently does not make us enemies”, he said.

“We may disagree but no matter our differences, if we really want peace, we can learn to view the issue from each other view viewpoint, we can resolve our differences and that makes us human regardless of our diversity,” he added.

Prof. Marfo noted that diversity was not the problem but how they react to their differences was rather the problem and urged the people to try and overcome that to promote social cohesion.

Mr. Emmanuel Danyomah, the Executive Secretary of the Upper West Regional Peace Council urged the people to use the knowledge they acquired during the training to help build a peaceful community.

Pio Haruna Osman Awedaga, the Chief of Kunchogu, expressed gratitude to the Peace Council and its partners for bringing together all the communities in the area, saying it had been long they came together because of their differences.

According to him, they have learnt a lot which he believed could help them initiate processes to unite their communities to live together again in peace.

Sumani Seidu Butu, Assembly Member for Butu Electoral Area, noted that the
communities have lots of conflicts and the Chiefs were trying to find solutions to no avail but expressed hope that the knowledge acquired during the programme would be of great help to their efforts to achieve peaceful coexistence among the communities.

Alhaji Ibrahim Darimani, a Leader of the Fulbey community in Kunchogu pledged to disseminate the information among his people but called for more of such engagements which he strongly believed could help restore peace to the area.

According to him, the Fulbey community were always afraid to take part in meetings but that now, but that fear had been taken away and they were now willing to participate in future meetings to help contribute to the restoration of peace to the area.