At a stock-taking event in Wa organized by the Upper West Regional office of the National Peace Council to review the peace process leading up to the 2016 general elections, the assistant country director of the UNDP, Louis Kuukpen, said partnerships among stakeholders had become important to track and deal with potential issues that could threaten the peace of communities and their peoples.

He said peace, as an important component of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, could not be compromised even on the smallest scale, since “it provides an important foundation for growth and development”.

“If there is no peace, there won't be development, and you can't have peace and development without partnerships,” he said.

During last year's general elections, UNDP partnered the European Union (EU) through the sharing of expertise, experiences and other resources to empower civil society groups to promote a peaceful electoral process.

Strategizing for the future

According to Justice Agbezuge, a governance and peace analyst with the UNDP-Ghana, the stock-taking meeting was to review the roles that the relevant CSOs played in the lead up to the 2016 general elections in order design appropriate strategies for future projects in Ghana's peace process.

“We want to review this so that we are able to strategise and prepare very well towards the local level as well as the 2020 general elections,” Mr Agbezuge said.

The review exercise, he said, formed part of the Insider Mediator Project being jointly promoted and supported by the UNDP and the EU “to strengthen the capacity of actors in Ghana's peace architecture to be able to mediate as well as prevent conflicts that are ongoing”.

He said unlike the previous peace campaign, the peace process had been set in motion much earlier towards the next elections in order to overcome some of the challenges that emerged during the previous campaign.

“We want to start the game much earlier this time round so that if any issues that need to be remedied come up, we are able to plan adequately for it so that we are able to make the needed impact when it comes to the 2020 general elections,” he stressed.

Insider Mediator Project

The Insider Mediator Project involves engagement with CSOs, the media, and specific state institutions – including the Electoral Commission, the National Commission on Civic Education, and the National Peace Council – to build their capacities in their relevant involvement in the electoral process to help sustain the peace of the country.

Mr Agbezuge said towards the 2016 general elections, the UNDP engaged the regional election early warning and response groups across the country which met periodically “to review some early warning signals that they had picked”.

During the period, the world body, with the support of the Canadian and Danish governments, also furnished the regional offices of the National Peace Council outside Accra with vehicles for effective performance of their duties.

The chairman of the Regional Peace Council, Rev Dr Aloysius Nuolabong, urged the various actors in the peace process, including the CSOs, to employ every experience and expertise to help sustain the peace of Ghana.

He said the National Peace Council acknowledged the importance of all groups and individuals in the peace process, and urged participants in the review exercise to show even greater commitment to maintain peace at al levels of society.

Quick read:

 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has called on civil society and community-based organisations to strengthen their impact and contributions in local communities to help sustain the peace in Ghana.