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Be good ambassadors of peace, Membe tells trainees
2007-11-19 08:42:10
By Gadiosa Lamtey
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Bernard Membe had called upon participants to the just ended international training on conflict resolution to be good ambassadors of peace in their respective countries.
Membe made the remarks on Saturday in a speech read on his behalf by Dr. Biswaro while closing a 10-day International Training on Conflict Resolution, Peace Keeping, Peace Building, Post Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation Processes in Dar es Salaam.
He said the training endeavoured to contribute to the Africa Union (AU) peacekeeping standby force (ASF) as well as training civilian personnel for deployment to African peace missions.
For his part, the Director of Institutional Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), Cosmas Bahali said that the objective of the training was to contribute to increased capacity in conflict resolution for civil societies in Eastern and Central Africa involved in peace building and post conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes on a daily basis.
Bahali said: `We picked Africa because the continent is one of the most war riddled continent in the world.
Tanzania was picked as the centre of training because the country ranks high in peace, security and stability in the great lakes region in particular Africa,` he said.
He said the training would help people to resolve conflicts in their country without calling for intervention from other countries.
`They can at least sit together and negotiate for a solution. Military forces alone are not suitable to crisis management tasks. Force alone cannot create a stable society and functioning institutions,` said Bahali.
Meanwhile a participant from Somaliland, Sheikh Muse Abdulkarim said that the training would help them to find peaceful resolution without using force or calling for other countries to intervene.
He called upon fellow participants to use the knowledge acquired from the training to educate people in their respective country.
The training brought together 19 African countries of Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon and Congo.
Others were DRC, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya. Within the list also were Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
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