The immediate past Superintendent of the Assemblies of God Church, Reverend Professor Paul Frimpong-Manso, has called for proactive peace building activities to safeguard the peace of the country.
He said activities that promoted peaceful coexistence and peace across the country must be everyday activities and not occasionally due to the invaluable role of peace in the development process.
“Let’s be proactive in our peace building activities. We need not wait until election year before embarking on peace campaigns.”
Rev. Frimpong-Manso made the call in Accra over the weekend at the Second Dialogue and Peace Conference organised by TUDEC Development Corporation.
The conference was organised in collaboration with the National Peace Council (NPC), Christian Council of Ghana, the National Chief Imam and the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, and it aimed at promoting peaceful coexistence in diversity, mutual understanding and improve dialogue between various faiths, cultures and races.
He said the conference was a positive initiative which must be replicated across the whole country.
Rev. Prof. Frimpong-Manso noted that in the 2021 Global Peace Report (GPR), Ghana ranked the second most peaceful country in Africa and 38th in the world out of 163 countries reviewed, and this made Ghana the most peaceful country in West Africa after scoring 1.715ponts.
This, he said, was an improvement over the 2020 ranking where Ghana ranked third in Africa and 43rd in the world.
He noted that Ghana had been making steady progress in its quest to ensure sustainable peace, stressing that “While we celebrate this feat, we cannot go to sleep as threats to these feat are not far from Ghana”.
Rev. Prof. Frimpong-Manso, Chairman of the NPC, said the conference was timely looking at the threats posed by terrorism and violent extremism activities in the Sahel and other neigbhouring countries.
He said the threat to terrorism and violent extremism had heightened, with the security circles in Ghana giving way to the porous borders across the sub-region.
“There are growing fears of spread of violent extremist groups across the sub-region, including Ghana. Other notable domestic threats which promote fertile grounds for violent extremism are chieftaincy and ethnic clashes, farmer-herder conflicts, violent demonstrations, armed robberies, proliferations of arms and drug trafficking,” he added.
On his part, the President of TUDEC, Mr Cafer Tepeli, said the world was currently faced with discrimination, hatred and violence.
He said it was in this direction that TUDEC had taken it upon itself to organise such conferences to enable people dialogue towards world peace.
Mr Tepeli said the calm and peace in Ghana could be leveraged to promote world peace.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
