Media urged to enhance participation in peace building interventions
NAN-H-118
Peace
By Temitope Ponle
Maiduguri, Feb. 28, 2018 (NAN) The media has been urged to enhance its participation in facilitating peace building efforts in the country.
The call was made by participants at the end of a two-day conference on human rights, peace and security in Maiduguri on Wednesday.
Participants urged media organisations to initiate social activities and create media content that would provide information on human rights awareness and peace building.
They also reiterated the call for stakeholders to strengthen and restructure security and public complaint units and create an all-inclusive platform for early warning and response.
The conference also called on civil society organisations to ensure adequate capacity building and enhance collaboration with one another.
The conference was organised by Search for Common Ground (Search), National Human Rights Commission and Northeast Civil Society Forum.
It had as its theme: “Developing and integrated and locally owned human rights, peace and security agenda for the Northeast”.
The aim of the conference was to create an Agenda of Action to address issues of peace, security and human rights in parts of the northeast.
The agenda which would be implemented within a two-year period is aimed at enhancing coordination among major stakeholders to meet the humanitarian needs in affected communities.
Senior Project Coordinator, Search Nigeria, Ms Fatima Madaki told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that consultative meetings would be held with stakeholders to build on the plan developed at the conference.
“”What they did was to look at intervention areas to address the gaps and challenges in the field of practice and then to develop a set of recommendations that would be popularised.
““This is a framework to identify what functions we want whatever structure we are setting to play for us; two days is not enough to develop a two-year agenda.
“”We would want to have consultative meetings with different multi sector stakeholders to see how they can pick what they need to strengthen their strategies and collaborate with one another.
“”Hopefully, with the consultative meetings that will be held with our partners, we should come out with a more actionable agenda.”
Madaki further said that the the human rights, peace and security conference would be held annually to review the strategy document and its impact on organisations and the lives of citizens. (NAN)
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