GLOWA empowers women, youth to promote peaceful elections
A project aimed at empowering women and the youth to promote peace in the upcoming elections has been launched in Akatsi in the Volta Region.
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It was launched by Global Action for Women Empowerment (GLOWA), a non-governmental organisation, and sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), under its Reacting to Early Warning and Response Data (REWARD) in West Africa programme.
The programme works through its Creative Associates (Funds for Peace & Karuna Centre for Peace) to ensure existence of peaceful democratic environment in West Africa.
In collaboration with the Electoral Commission (EC), the project, designed for the Akatsi South, Agotime Ziope and South Tongu districts where 10 flashpoint communities have been identified, will recruit community champions and peace ambassadors to support its implementation.
Project launch
Addressing a press conference to launch the project, the Chief Executive Officer of GLOWA, Nana Kugbeadzor Bakateyi II, said the project’s trained violence prevention and community champions would be expected to undertake voter education and election-related violence prevention campaigns and outreaches in public places.
She said it was a known fact that some energetic youth (who are “okada” riders, taxi drivers, political party foot soldiers) and some women were often misused to perpetrate various forms of violence during the electioneering season.
Nana Bakateyi said their actions were characterised by insults, hooting, defacing of posters of opponents, snatching ballot boxes, collection of voter identity cards, unnecessary noise making at polling stations and forcing people to vote for a particular party.
Unacceptable behaviour
Nana Bakateyi said,“These acts are unacceptable, since they can trigger electoral violence and degenerate into conflicts. As a democratic society, we should be tolerant of divergent views, patient, slow to speak or act, and practise fellow feeling”.
She, therefore, called on politicians, political parties and parliamentary aspirants to conduct their campaigns with decency and with decorous language.
Nana Bakateyi said some uncertainties poisoned the political climate and scared people, especially women and other vulnerable groups, from actively participating in voting and other political engagements such as making their voices heard so that their concerns could be integrated into the development programme of duty bearers.
Caution to media
She, therefore, said it was critical for actors in both the print and the electronic media to practise responsible reportage and not to allow their outfits to be used for inflammatory speeches and unauthenticated reports to aggravate fear among the electorate.
She also called on the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to step up its game by ensuring that Inter-Party Dialogue Committees (IPDCs) were proactive and functional in all constituencies to enable it to respond promptly to all triggers of electoral violence and conflicts to ensure peace and tolerance before, during and after the December 7 general election.
