Young people are simultaneously the most likely perpetrators of violence and the most effective agents of peace, making their training in conflict prevention essential but only if it addresses their actual needs, a peace building expert said at a youth training session in Bolgatanga, Upper East Regional capital.
“The youth are active as peace builders, as well as perpetrators of violence. So if they are brought together to learn to prevent peace and move away from violence, then we are actually tackling the section of society that is needed to be involved in the effort of peace building,” said Ali Anankpieng, former Upper East Regional Executive Secretary for the National Peace Council.
Mr. Anankpieng was speaking at the opening of a two-day training organized by Catholic Relief Services for 40 carefully selected youth in Bolgatanga as part of the Prevention of Violent Extremism through Social Accountability (PoVETSA) Phase II project.
The veteran peace builder emphasized that youth vulnerability to violence stems from two critical factors: unemployment and lack of knowledge about how to channel their skills constructively. “People take advantage of them and use them for their own purposes,” he said.
But Mr. Anankpieng stressed that peace building is not an innate quality—it must be taught. “We believe that things like peace building are learned processes. They are not inbuilt. You learn to practise them. So if we bring them together and they are able to learn and accept to play their role, then we are getting them to do the right things in society.”
The inclusion of both male and female youth in the training is “very critical,” Mr. Anankpieng noted, “because male and female are supposed to work for peace, and if they are able to learn the skills and be able to apply, then we are making progress in society.”
Drawing on field evidence from the Upper East Region, Anankpieng said young people demonstrate readiness to work for peace when given proper tools and understanding. “Given the skills in the Upper East Region, the youth are ready to work for peace. And that’s why projects like this are important,” he said.
The challenge, he explained, is often a lack of foundational knowledge: “At times, it is lacking the knowledge to know what is peace, what is violence and what is conflict. But if they are able to understand these things, they can practise it in a way that will help society.”
Mr. Anankpieng praised the PoVETSA initiative for providing both a learning platform and an application platform for young people. “It is giving them the platform to be able to apply what they know and giving them the platform to be able to learn what they should be applying. And that is why this opportunity or this initiative is very important.”
However, he issued a crucial caveat about youth programming more broadly: all interventions must be “demand driven”—originating from young people themselves rather than being imposed by well-meaning adults or institutions.
“For youth, formal education is not the end of it. Let’s find out from them what they need. And if you can provide that, then it meets their needs,” Mr. Anankpieng said. “But let’s get their input as to what they need. And if you are able to provide that, then we’ll get them to do the inheritance.”
He warned against the common pitfall of top-down programming: “If you send out something for them, you think that this is what they need and you give it to them, it may not be appropriate for them.”
“Everything we do should be demand driven, whether it is entrepreneurship, apprenticeship, or even soft skills like peace building. Let it come from them: ‘This is what we need.’ And if they accept it and you are able to give it to them, you will see them applying it,” Anankpieng said.
“In the instance where we think for them and give them what we think should be given them, you cannot see them practising it because it will not even suit their interests.”
He characterized the PoVETSA training as an example of this demand-driven approach: “This particular project, I believe, is demand driven. They didn’t just come out and say youth of Bolgatanga should come for a training. Some interviews were made and then interest shown in this project. And that is why they are bringing it to them.”
The PoVETSA project, funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and implemented by CRS in partnership with the National Peace Council and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre since October 2022, operates across five northern regions: Upper East, Upper West, North East, Northern, and Savannah.
The initiative aims to improve civilian-security relations toward preventing violent extremism, which threatens to spill over from the Sahel region where neighboring Burkina Faso faces ongoing attacks. Youth unemployment has been identified as the most common driver of violent extremism in northern Ghana.
The 40 participants in Bolgatanga are receiving training in mediation, early warning response systems, dialogue, and other conflict resolution tools. They are expected to serve as “agents of peace building” in their respective communities, stepping down their newly acquired skills to youth groups, families, and community organizations.
Mr. Anankpieng highlighted why youth engagement is particularly strategic: “The youth are the most mobile in terms of mixing with other groups, in terms of even being active in community activities, so if you have people like the youth being trained to enable them to participate in peace building, then you are enabling that to affect the rest of society.”
” The youth are also considered as agents of development, and for that matter agents of peace. So involving them in peace building activities is actually the way to go,” he said.
Beyond youth training, PoVETSA includes training 150 security personnel on the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine and human rights-based conflict management, conducting regional stakeholder dialogues to build civilian-security trust, implementing women’s empowerment programs, and training journalists on preventing violent extremism.
The project addresses root causes of radicalization including youth unemployment, marginalization, political intolerance, farmer-herder conflicts, illegal mining disputes, weak governance structures, and social exclusion.
Source: a1radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Bolgatanga
