By
Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Nov 12, GNA –
As part of preparation towards Ghana’s election 2020, the West Africa Network
for Peacebuilding (WANEP), a regional civil society organisation, has launched
the “Strengthening Early Warning and Conflicts Response During Ghana Elections”
Project.
The project is
particularly designed to strengthen the WANEP National Early Warning Systems
(NEWS) and also aimed at enhancing the capacity of civil society and relevant
state institutions to promote human security, conflict prevention and
peacebuilding.
It is being funded
by the Government of Canada under the Canada Fund for Local Initiative (CFLI).
Mr Albert Yelyang,
National Network Coordinator, WANEP, did the Project launch during the Project
Inception Meeting with National Leadership of Political Parties and
Stakeholders in Accra.
He said the project
launch was a very key assignment towards proactiveness in preventing violence
in an election that would probably be yet one of the most competitive in the
fourth republic.
He said the project
aimed at making sure that they were conscious of identifying the threats,
conducting analysis, providing warning through reporting on the election
related dynamics, and responding to the warnings before they degenerated
further.
“We intend to use
this process to support create a peaceful environment for electioneering that
will encourage participation by all,” Mr Yelyang said.
He said the project
also sought to encourage the political parties and the media to be circumspect
in their campaign and reportage.
The National Network
Coordinator urged political parties to conduct policy based and issue based
campaigns to enable the electorates make informed choices.
He said the peaceful
conduct of elections in the country required a deployment of early warning and
conflict management infrastructure to mitigate threats that might arise
especially between majority and minority groups.
“We will need early
disbursement and support to the key election stakeholders such as the National
Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the Electoral Commission (EC) and the National
Peace Council (NPC) to conduct their business enough to curtail some of the
misinformation, create well informed electorates, … and prevent election
related threats,” he said.
“This is part of
early warning because early warning without early response is no early
warning.”
Mr Yelyang noted
that the good and bad lessons learnt in the nation’s past elections especially
in the 2016 elections and the Ayawaso West Wuogon Parliamentary By-Elections
had thought Ghanaians to be in love with the adage that says “the early bird,
catches the worm”, and also the adage that “a stitch in time saves nine.”
“We believe that our
efforts will compliment already initiated ones such as the Law on vigilantism
and related violence and those being carried out by the various democratic and
elections related stakeholders throughout the country,” he said.
He therefore,
encouraged all stakeholders that their efforts towards preventing and
curtailing electoral and election related violence should be programmatic
spanning long terms rather than short term and eventful periods and activities.
Mr Vincent Azumah,
West Africa Regional Coordinator, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, WANEP,
said the West Africa Region had been bedeviled with a number of peace and
security challenges.
He said key among
these challenges were organized crime and violent extremism, gender peace and
security, environmental security, democracy and governance; adding that “Ghana
is not and has not been immune to these challenges”.
He noted that in the
Northern parts of Ghana, there had been a growing influx of refugees fleeing
extremist attacks in Burkina Faso.
He said from January
to June 2019, over 2000 Burkinabé refugees; mostly women and children had been
registered and settled in communities in the Upper West Region.
Professor Vladimir
Antwi-Danso, Security Analyst and Dean of Academic Affairs at the Ghana Armed
Forces Command Staff College, urged Ghanaians to ensure that country once again
emerge victorious, as a shining example to the international community in the
2020 general election.
Mr Pasquale
Salvaggio, Political Counsellor, High Commission of Canada, said the success of
any election would be attributed to the active participation of the citizenry
of the nation.
GNA
