The Savannah Regional Peace Council in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has held a community sensitisation workshop on hate speech and negative counter narratives for at risk-youth at the Sawla -Tuna-Kalba District.
The two day workshop, held separately at Sawla and Tuna brought together selected participants from the District aimed at enabling them to have better knowledge and effective responses to hate speech and become campaigners against hate speech in their respective communities.
It also focused on equipping them to contribute to early warning and prevention of hate speech and negative counter narratives in both social media and Traditional media to contribute to preventing violent extremism.
The workshop formed part of an 18 month UNDP Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) project, dubbed, PVE Atlantic Corridor Regional project 2023 to 2025, with support from the Government of Denmark under its Peace and Stabilisation Fund (PSF), being implemented in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cote d`Ivoire.
The project seeks to prevent and address the immediate localized drivers of radicalization leading to violent extremism in target communities in these countries, while providing support to strengthening the `infrastructure of peace`, namely mechanisms for early warnings and early response at local level.
Fr. Lazarus Annyere, the Savannah Regional chairman of the peace council, noted that the emergence of new and diverse threats has resulted in significant adverse effects on the social and economic progress of several nations.
This, he observed, therefore made it important to promote and disseminate alternative and counter-narrative messages, including hate speech promoting violence extremism in targeted locations so as to maintain peace and harmony to enhance development.
“It is important for us as a people to live together in harmony and not look down on others and demean them just for the mere fact that we see them differently in terms of their cultural background and l urged all of you, to from now on make attempts to foster unity”, he added
Mr Clifford Tampuori, the Regional Executive Secretary of the Council, presenting on “Understanding and Responding to Conflict”, highlighted that when conflicts are not handled properly, they escalate to become violent which has the tendency of causing instability.
He therefore urged the participants to be accommodating and find an amicably way of solving the differences in their respective communities even if it means compromising.
Participants expressed gratitude to the National Peace Council and all the stakeholders involved for spearheading the project aimed at fostering peace and countering violent extremism.
They said the workshop was insightful and has exposed them to peace building mechanisms that was necessary for maintaining peace.
“The workshop has exposed us to a lot of things that we didn’t know and going forward it would help us to prevent conflict and make appropriate reports when we see something”, they emphasised.
Source: yagbonradioonline
