Security Personnel numbering 30 from the Ghana Armed Forces, Police, Immigration, Fire Service, Prison Service, National Intelligence Bureau, and the Narcotics Control Commission in the Upper East Region have received training on the Responsibility to Protect Principle.
This training has become necessary in order to improve the level of service to the nation by the security sector actors during efforts to maintain peace and order in conflicting areas.
The activity being spearheaded by the National Peace Council (NPC) in partnership with the Catholic Relief Service (CRS) and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center with support from the Netherlands Embassy, seeks to get security agencies to conduct themselves in a more humane manner in their dealings with people in areas of conflict.
Phase II of the Preventing Violent Extremism through Social Accountability (PoTVESA II) project is a three-year project that is set to build the capacity and sensitize security on the Responsibility to Protect Principle at the regional level in the Upper East, Upper West, North East, Savannah and Northern Regions.
In all, it was expected that 150 personnel would have their capacities enhanced to prevent the worst forms of violence and persecution related to violent extremists’ and terrorists’ activities, risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
Speaking during the engagement, Frank Wilson Bodza, Deputy Director in Charge of Conflict Management at the National Peace Council noted that conflicts in the Northern part of the country, give reason for the engagement to deal with excesses during attempts to keep peace.
The training, he believes, would equip the security agencies to adopt a more humane approach in managing conflicts to serve as a reminder to be responsible and adopt a human centered approach to tackling conflicts and to prevent mass atrocity crimes.
“During conflict situations, when the security agencies come in, sometimes there are excesses. For such things to be minimized the National Peace Council worked around using soft approaches in addressing conflict issues. So, for us, we also want to engage our security agencies in a way that when conflicts are happening anywhere they go, they would use the human rights approach.
So, we’re giving them this responsibility to protect training to them to also enable them to appreciate that Ghana is operating within international laws and we should have local programs to prevent mass atrocity crimes,” he stated.
Adelaide Yiriyelleh, Project Manager of PoVESTA at CRS Ghana, explained that the training and project seek to improve civilian-security trust relations towards the prevention of violent extremism.
She hopes that the personnel will inculcate the principle of Responsibility to Protect into their day-to-day activities.
“This R2P training falls under the PoTVESA II Project which is seeking to improve civilian-security trust relations in Ghana towards the prevention of violent extremism. This forms part of several initiatives that we are going to embark on to improve the relationship between the security services and the civilians. We are doing this across the five northern regions, bringing together a total of 150 from all these regions and we are hoping that they will be able to step this down and inculcate that into their day-to-day activities,” she emphasized.
