Peace building should go beyond signing of documents - AGREDS

Tamale, April 11, GNA - Stakeholders in peace building efforts in the Dagbon chieftaincy crisis have been urged not to let their initiatives end at the mere signing of documents by the contending parties.

They have been told not to assume that the parties that signed the peace agreement automatically trust each other enough to facilitate its implementation.

Mr. Martin Alfa, Programme Manager of the Assemblies of God Relief and Development Services (AGREDS), was speaking at the beginning of a four-day capacity building workshop on: "Conflict transformation and peace building", for members of the Northern Region Peace and Advocacy Council (NORPAC) in Tamale on Tuesday. AGREDS organised the workshop with sponsorship from DIAKONIA, a Swedish NGO.

The workshop, among its objectives, is to build the technical and professional capacity of members and staff of key institutions that are directly involved in conflict interventions. The workshop focused at directly engaging the middle level leadership in the Dagbon crisis such as sub-chiefs (Zaachis), market queens (magazias), youth and women leaders in initiatives and activities that would help build trust and confidence between the two chieftaincy gates.

Mr. Alfa said the parties involved in the Dagbon crisis were still suspicious of each other's moves and intentions and this was impeding the implementation of the road map to peace. He said mediators were always happy to succeed in getting parties in conflict to sign a peace deal and such successes were always celebrated with pomp while they hardly stop to think about how the victims and perpetrators of violence would live their lives in terms of relationship building.

"In building peace, we need to look beyond the present and the future into the distant future to fashion out interventions that will promote coexistence and relationship building", Mr. Alfa said.

He said it was in this light that AGREDS-Ghana had started initiatives aimed at livelihoods restoration and enhancement for youth and women leaders across the Dagbon conflict divide. Through the initiatives, he said, about 40 youth and women leaders from both the Dagbon chieftaincy gates had benefited from a 98 million-cedi loan since September 2006.

Mr. Alfa said unlike other workshops that had concentrated more on theories, concepts and tools of conflict analysis, AGREDS approach would focus more on reconciliation and painstaking process in dealing with the past and post-conflict situations, especially addressing issues of justice, truth, mercy and peace.

Mr. Charles Abass, the Northern Regional Coordinating Director, said if stakeholders in the Dagbon crisis were to succeed in forging genuine peace they should discard the "wearing of labels", that would identify them with political and religious groups.

"Peace is justice; peace can be established by a sincere and a genuine desire for it and not by mere lip service", he said. Mr. Amadu Ibrahim Zakari, the National Coordinator of the Ghana Network for Peace Building (GHANEP), said a wrong impression had been created about the Northern Region as a conflict prone area because people readily resorted to violence in settling misunderstanding. He said there were more chieftaincy conflicts in other regions of the country but theirs were hardly heard because they had used dialogue, mutual understanding or gone to the courts for settlement.