Poverty eradication crucial to conflict prevention – Hannah Tetteh
Ms. Hannah Tetteh, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, says poverty eradication is crucial to conflict prevention.
“People, who believe they have no future or means of achieving in life, are capable of doing anything to ensure their survival.”
Ms. Tetteh, said this at the opening of the 2013 General Assembly of the West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP) in Accra on Tuesday.
The two day event has the theme, “Strengthening the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework through National Architecture for Early Warning and Early Response.”
The Minister said whilst peace was needed for development, issues such as poverty, land disputes, political violence during elections and the illegal arms trade on the continent, combined to threaten peace in West Africa.
She said whilst preventing conflict was much less expensive than managing it, it was unfortunate that early warning signals too often failed to prevent conflict.
The Minister expressed the hope that the deliberations would come up with viable recommendations on identifying early warning signals towards conflict prevention.
Ms. Tetteh urged governments and political leaders to also endeavour to be in touch with the people they governed, and promote true participatory democracy.
She said once this was achieved, the governed basically felt a part of the governing process, which yielded them a lot of satisfaction and also, afforded those in leadership to be in tune with their concerns.
Ms. Tetteh said the government was fully committed to WANEP as well as the ECOWAS cause.
Mr. Emmanuel Bombande, Executive Director of WANEP, said with new threats to peace within the sub-region, such as violent extremism, there was the need for a more dynamic approach towards conflict prevention on the continent.
He said there was the need to work out violent conflict for both the community as well as the national level.
Mr. Bombande said a good combination of the two was a means of ensuring that early signs of conflict were identified and worked upon.
Delegates to the Assembly include WANEP network members, staff form the 15 member states of ECOWAS, National and Regional Board Members, WANEP strategic partners, including ECOWAS Commission, AU Commission and other development partners.
Source: GNA