Stakeholders have met in Tamale towards enhancing peace and security in the Northern Region especially as the country goes into general elections next year.
The dialogue which is under the auspices of the West Africa Network for Peace building WANEP –Ghana, is designed for the stakeholders to deliberate on ways of enhancing the regional level elections related conflicts, picking up early warning signs as well as the response needed to mitigating violence in the course of electioneering, during and after the 2020 general elections.
The yearlong project, facilitated by WANEP is sponsored by the Canadian High commission and Oxfam Ghana, is being implemented in eleven constituencies in the Northern, Bono East, Upper East and North East regions which have flash-points for electoral conflicts.
At the inception meeting, the stakeholders including the police, the military, the NCCE, the Electoral Commission, political parties representatives, persons with disability and Muslim and Christian women leaders as well as the media were exposed to the project design and were rallied to take ownership of the strategy and to play effective roles towards reducing electoral related violence in the region.
A project officer, Northern Ghana Governance activity at WANEP, Aidan Naah Sabie, said 47 percent of violence currently recorded in Ghana occurs especially during elections; hence the need to work towards reducing that by brining stakeholders together to identifying the early warning signals and ensuring that violence is dealt with before it spreads.
According to WANEP Ghana, the recurrence of election related and political motivated incidence of violence that have characterized national and local elections under the 4th republic had necessitated the need for all stakeholder with the capacity to resolve their own differences, by being at the forefront or championing dialogue at the grassroots.
Source: Nelson | www.diamondfmonline.com | Ghana
