Workshop for women in peace building held in Wa

Mrs. Cate Bob Milliar, the Upper West Regional Director of the Department of Women, has expressed worry about the non involvement of women in peace building and conflict management in northern Ghana. She said though Ghana, in response to the need for integrated national development was a signatory to several international declarations on women issues and rights, women still suffered little recognition on matters relating to peace building in the three northern regions. Mrs. Bob Milliar was speaking at a two-day workshop organised by the Department of Women in Wa to train women in peace building so that they could improve their capacity in dealing with all manner of conflicts in their communities to bring about development. The workshop brought together participants from all the nine districts in the region. Mrs. Milliar said women had the skills to promote peace if they were involved and should therefore be supported to contribute to building sustainable peace in the country. In a speech read on his behalf the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr. Mahmud Khalid, said the gap between the north and the south could not be bridged if conflicts continued to exist and called for 0efforts from the citizenry to arrest the situation. He said public workers refused to accept postings to some parts of the north partly because of these conflicts. He said valuable resources that could have been channelled into useful ventures such as the Northern Development Fund or the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) were being used to resolve conflicts. He commended the Department of women for organizing such an important training to improve the capacity of women in peace building. Rev. Fr. Thadeus Kuusah, the resource person for the workshop, said participants would be taken through some traditional causes of conflicts and how best they could be managed.