Peace, security is a shared responsibility - Mrs Bertha Demenu

The Political and Public Affairs Officer at the Canadian High Commission, Mrs. Bertha Demenu, has urged Ghanaians to see peace and security as a shared responsibility and work toward sustaining it. Mrs. Demenu said this at a two-day workshop with women and youth groups in Techiman in the Bono East Region on the prevention of violent extremism. The workshop was organized by the National Peace Council (NPC) with the support of the Canadian Fund for Local Initiative (CFLI). Mrs. Demennu said peace was a human development factor that created enabling environment and projected a community where everyone is involved in ensuring the activities of violent extremism and vigilantism did not thrive. She said a community where everyone played a watchdog role; conscious of preserving peace, with well-informed women and youth equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to help prevent violence; peaceful co-existence and social cohesion would prevail. Mrs Demenu was concerned that most often matters of peace and security were seen as the business of particular stakeholders and, therefore, left for only a few to address. That, according to her, was not right because achieving sustainable peace required collective effort with a holistic approach to help prevent acts of terrorism, which were already occurring in some neighbouring countries. The Deputy Director in-charge of Conflict Management and Resolution at the NPC, Mr Frank Wilson Bodza, attributed the menace of extremism to bad governance.