Reachout, Partners Power Female Community Peace Mediators

 

By NBB In Limbe

A three-day workshop to transform women to peace mediators has taken place in Limbe, with main objective to promote a culture of sustainable peace in the South West Region of Cameroon. Based on the theme - Reflection forum for community women peace mediators (COWOPEM), the workshop which opened Wednesday, April 14, 2021 focused on developing a coordination mechanism and advocacy strategy for sustainable peace in the region and beyond.

The 30 women were brought together to reflect on how they can contribute within their communities in de-escalating tensions, formalise their group as peace mediators as well as engage mental wellness activities to keep them sound in mind and body.

Speaking during the opening ceremony, the South West Regional Delegate of Women Empowerment and the Family, Lucia Ediage epse Sona said she was happy to see women come out to advocate for peace. She congratulated Esther Omam, Chief Executive Officer of Reach Out (organiser of the event), for her initiatives to push women forward, encouraging her to keep on. She also urged the women to be peaceful first as individuals, before acting as peace mediators in their communities.

Esther Omam, while putting the workshop in context detailed that “This is about building bridges of peace; these women stand as inter-phase between their communities and any enemy of peace/change. We have seen that they form an integral part of the solution to resolving the conflict in this country.”

According to her, “its about structuring community women peace mediators (COWOPEM), who are women from the six divisions of the South West. For the past four months these women have been undergoing capacity strengthening in the areas of peace building and mediation”, she noted.

“We know that the people who suffer the brunt of this conflict the more are women from the grassroot and they have been neglected and completely left out in all peace processes ongoing in the country. As a result, we thought it necessary to go back to the grassroots where the guns are talking everyday and where there is so much psychological trauma”, Omam points, equally observing that “There are various conflicts within communities, not only the ongoing Anglophone crisis…conflicts within families, social groups and within communities themselves.”

The women in the course of the workshop also engaged in mental wellness (Self care) to take them out of the everyday stress in their communities and to build peaceful minds and bodies.

The workshop was facilitated by Rev Gustav Ebai and others, who engaged the women through various topics including group work activities on structuring associations; (improving governance and purpose of association, vision, missions and objectives etc) for the purpose of documentation.

According to Omam, it is important the women formalise their group – South West Community Women Peace Mediators in order to attend to any form of mediation work. She rejoiced that so far, women are making progress in peace mediation as “some have recorded remarkable results; farmlands have been retroceded to them; classrooms previously occupied by gunmen are now free thanks to negotiations by women in some communities etc”.

It should be noted that the project which has been hailed by many in the peace and advocacy arena was funded by UNESCO in its constant contribution to seeking lsting peace in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon.