Kankan: diverse actors equipped on the preservation of peace

The training workshop for stakeholders involved in the preservation of peace and national reconciliation in Kankan was closed yesterday, Sunday, December 29, 2019. For two days, the women’s autonomy centre hosted this meeting between students from different schools, students, civil society representatives and religious structures, thanks to a project led by the National Coalition in Support of National Reconciliation (CONAREG), the Guineematin.com correspondent in Kankan.

For two days, actors from all backgrounds were equipped to live together to promote forgiveness, peace preservation and national reconciliation in Guinea.

At the end of the meeting, Alpha Kabinet Kaba, a participant and representative of the NGO center of animation for peace, said he was very marked by what he saw. « I saw the victims of violence witness and explain their suffering. To resolve all this, we must forgive, we retain everything that happened; but it is also important to talk about it. We must agree to teach the story of Guinea to young people », he advised.

At the end of the workshop, the organisers placed particular emphasis on the presentation of the concepts learned by the participants at their respective structures.

Marie Sia Yaradounou, a participant, committed herself to this. « The best is for forgiveness in this country to move forward. I am ready to go and duplicate the concepts in the various structures from which I have come, but also in my neighborhood, I will make them understand that Guinea cannot move forward if all ethnicities do not commit themselves ».

According to the organizers, the next steps in this project will be to conduct educational talks and awareness-raising to reach all the prefectures of Guinea.

According to Souleymane Bah, president of the National Coalition in Support of National Reconciliation in Guinea, the stakeholders concerned had to be warned about violence and ethnocentrism. « They had to be warned about violence, ethnocentrism, but also to give them explanations on body maps which are elements of psycho-social support. Normally, it is the victims who should be there; but, it is always important to prevent because we are potential victims. So, we talked to them about everything that divides and everything that causes violence, by getting them to be actors themselves to fight violence », he said.

During the consultation, a documentary of more than an hour was projected on past violence recorded in Guinea, from 1958 to the present day.