The News
Published Date: Jul 22, 2012
TRAINING WORKSHOP ON ‘PEACE BUILDING’
Political and social activists from Gilgit-Baltistan, AJK, and Haripur (KPK) Friday vowed to shun violence and promote peace at a five-day training workshop held here with the theme “Peace Building”.
The moot was jointly organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and Search for Common Ground (SFCG), which was funded by Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). The training workshop held from July 16-20 was part of activities for promotion of dialogue for peace building through media and youth mobilisation.
The activity sought to involve media personnel, local activists and youth in peace building activities and to present models of coexistence, tolerance and reconciliation across the country.
These trained leaders will form dialogue forums at district-level to build peace in their respective communities.
During training, Shafqat Munir, Asia Right in Crisis Coordinator, Oxfam deliberated on challenges of reconciliation and mediation and argued that, now conflicts can only be handled through process of reconciliation as use of power or applying unilateral approaches cannot work in today’s globalised world where people from across regions are intertwined together.
He also said that democratic values necessitate integrative negotiation, mediation and reconciliation as the predominant ways of dealing with conflicts.
Badar Alam, Editor Herald introduced peace building frameworks and principles to the participants and explained various conflict analysis tools. He said, we can solve conflicts only if we could understand its root cause.
Brig (Retd) Muhammad Yaseen, Senior Advisor, SDPI talked on negotiation skills and said, successful negotiation skills include establishing common goals, focus on interests not positions, separation of people from the problem, invent options for mutual gain and openness to third party assistance.
Ahmed Salim, Senior Advisor, SDPI conducted session on connectors and dividers of peace in conflict affected areas. Faisal Gorchani, Advocacy Coordinator, SDPI enlightened the participants on the role of stakeholder in the process of peace building. He trained participants on consensus building keeping in view the varying interests and positions of the stakeholders.