PWSL Holds Leadership Development Workshop on Election Violence
By Admire Olando Price
Prison Watch Sierra Leone (PWSL) in collaboration with DIGNITY and MIDRIFT HURINET holds a three-day Leadership Development Workshop on Election Violence in Sierra Leone.
The objective of the workshop is to share best practices and lessons learnt on violence Prevention in general and election prevention in particular in Kenya. It is also to introduce a new form of leadership development from intersectoral leaders to begin working together as key catalyst for addressing violence in general and election related violence in particular as a systematic challenge in Sierra Leone.
The workshop will also share the lived experience of the Placed-based leadership development framework which has enabled the growth of effective leaders and impactful collective leadership for inter-sectoral Urban Violence Prevention in Kenya.
Declaring the workshop open, Amadu Mannah, Special Technical Adviser at the Ministry of Internal Affairs started by asking what is violence while noting that this is one question that needs answers.
He said violence situation hurts and destroys society.
Mr. Mannah describe political violence as the use of force to score political goal and that each and every citizen must guard against it.
"This is so because the quest for power is causing people to even go to the extent to kill. In my many years of experience, i have seen horrible things. We are now importing workable strategy on how to deal with political violence. This is good, he said."
The representative from Ministry of Internal Affairs reminded the gathering about what was witness in Kenya that led to the loss of lives.
He thanked Prison Watch in bringing new ideas and also bringing other countries to share their own experience on election.
Speaking earlier on, Head of Office at Prison Watch Sierra Leone, John Lansana Coker said the workshop is about violence in election and the need to deal with it.
Mr. Coker encourages participants to be frank in discussing around election violence.
"We've launched our report on election violence before now, mainly cataloging what happens during the 2018 elections. We don't want a repeat of such and the reason why we have colleagues from Kenya who are here to share their own experience as they too went through election violence. We all know what we went through during the 2018 election. We don't want to experience anything of such again, he said."
Joseph Omondi, Executive Director, MIDRIFT HURINET sharing his experience from Kenya said people have to be honest about election violence.
This he said is important because this is the only way we could be able to deal with it.
"Let us learn from each other. We have gone through election violence and I am not sure we want to go through it, he said."
The Project Manager from DIGNITY, Stime Andersen in her statement said placed-based leadership development is a new form of development to face complex violence challenges.
Ms. Andersen said the workshop will allow participants to learn lessons from Kenya on creating free, fair and peaceful election.
The representative from the National Peace Commission, Kojo Mend Buah said the commission is happy to be part of the workshop as it is part of effort to deal with violence in elections.
