Details

From 7th till 11th of October the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in collaboration with its partner the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province Pastoral Conference (TEPPCON) conducted two workshops in Garu und Sirigu in the Upper East Region. The workshops covered the topic ‘Promoting Peaceful Community Development’.

Especially in northern Ghana tensions between different ethnicities still persist. The opposing parties are mostly settlers and indigenous fighting over land rights and the succession of local traditional authorities. In the past, ethnic tensions have been instrumentalised for party politics or personal interests. Though violent conflicts are not the norm and have not flamed up after 2010, the issue needs to be addressed in order to prevent an escalation of ethnic tensions.

Against this background KAS and TEPPCON have organised workshops on conflict prevention and mediation for five years in Upper East, Upper West and Northern Region. TEPPCON can draw on very experienced resource persons like Father Thaddeus Kuusah, chairman of the Northern Region Peace Advisory Council (NORPAC) and staff member of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ghana. Thus it can be expected, that the interventions will have a significant impact. With a total of about 160 participants the two workshops were well-attended. The presentations of the resource persons covered topics like the concepts of conflict and peace, conflict analysis and mediation strategies. Furthermore the participants had the chance to exert the content of the presentations in role-play situations. In order to reach more people, participants were encouraged to spread their knowledge among their communities.