The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in collaboration with the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council has held a capacity building training for security entities on gender and youth responsive safeguarding procedures.
This forms part of the implementation of a 2- year project dubbed the Peace Building Fund (PBF) Project to enhance social cohesion and social contract, through the empowerment of women and youth in three regions of Northern Ghana.
The beneficiary regions are the Upper East, Upper West, and North East Regions. In the Upper East Region, the project is being implemented in Bongo, Bawku West, and Garu Districts. For Upper West, it is the Wa West and Sissala West Districts that are benefiting from the implementation of the project while the beneficiary districts in the North East Region are Yunyoo-Nasuan, Cherepone, and Bunkpurugu-Nankpanduri Districts.
The target of the project, which saw to the training of personnel of the Ghana Police Service, Immigration, customs, and officials, is to be able to prevent and address the root causes of localized and spillover conflicts and vulnerabilities to violent extremism in Northern Ghana.
With clear objectives such as the desire to empower local government institutions, actors, and customary governance structures to ensure inclusive governance, economic development, and quality service delivery, enable functional spaces for dialogues and mediation for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and enhance the resilience and agency of women and youth for their full and meaningful participation to contribute constructively to local government decision and conflict prevention and peacebuilding, it is anticipated that local governance structures will be more inclusive and responsive, women and youth will be more resilient to the triggers of conflict and participate in peacebuilding.
It is also expected that state and non-state actors would positively collaborate through the use of early warning systems to prevent conflict.
Speaking on the sidelines of the training, Selina Owusu, Gender Analyst, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Focal Point-Peace Building Fund Project noted that the training has become necessary in a bid to enhance social cohesion.
“This engagement is necessary because we are looking at enhancing social cohesion and for you to enhance social cohesion, we need to ensure that the different segments of society all work together and dialogue. So, for instance, we have an outcome looking at how the state and non-state actors including the security personnel can collaborate to pick early warning signals in the communities. So, the idea is to enhance their skills on how to do rights-based safeguarding,” she stressed.
Dr. Emma Birikorang, Acting Director of Research, at Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, noted that it is expected that the security personnel following the training will be thorough in the discharge of their duties.
