By; AUSTINE EMMANUEL, Kaduna
The Global Peace Women, an arm of Global Peace Foundation Nigeria (GPFN) has appealed for collective commitment to peace action in Kaduna State.
The appeal was made at the one day conference, held in Kaduna on Thursday, stressing the importance of women’s roles in building societal growth and harmony as panacea for sustainable growth and development.
Speaking on the programme with the theme, “Empowering Families for Community Peace Advocacy,” the Executive Director, Gender Awareness Trust and President of the Network of Peace and Security for Women in ECOWAS region, Dr. Lydia Umar, emphasized the need for individual and collective commitment to achieving lasting peace in the society.
She added that peace requires commitment, sacrifice, and courage, while stressing that contemporary society lacks peace friendliness, hence the need to mobilize mothers who are key actors in breeding peaceful coexistence, starting from their respective homes.
Lydia also disclosed that Kaduna State Governor, Senator Uba Sani earlier this month, launched a working policy document inline with the United Nations Resolution, 2025 that stipulate women’s role in a bid to mitigate crisis in their communities.
She said, “the document builds on five pillars. That is, participation of women in everything that has to do with building peace and conflict resolution, protection from insecurity because the document particularly recognize the fact that it’s women that suffers the most when you have violence.
“Ninety percent of IDPs are women and they are suffering in very deplorable condition. Also, promotion and prosecution. That means that anybody found to breach the peace should face the law because we have the Violence Against People Prohibition law, in Kaduna state and should be put into action instead of paper work.”
Speaking at the event, wife of former Governor of Kaduna state, Hajiya Asmau Makarfi described the program as apt, noting that there is no better time to mobilize women for peace but now.
Lamenting that women are always at the receiving end of every conflict in the society, Hajiya Asmau opined that women can be used as agents of change, rather than victims of rape, insurgency and arm profileration.
She also applauded the male counterparts for their resilience in ensuring that the society thrive towards the right direction, while advocating for synergy between the male and female folks to promote societal harmony.
Earlier, the Country Director, GPFN Rev. Dr. John Joseph Hayab remarked that the Global Peace Women is an arm of the Global Peace Foundation where they focus on leveraging on the capability and the contribution of mothers to building peace begining from the home.
Dr. Hayab said “Everybody know that the home is the first institution for love, friendship, tolerance and even understanding life so when children grow up at home where they are loved and thought in the area of peace practices, then our society will be peaceful, but when we think that our children should go and learn peace from school, it’s not possible because it is what they learn at home that they will display in school. Similarly in the society.
“The mother for us play a vital role in the area of peace when it comes to family upbringing as she is there for the children everyday.
“So we have assembled women together in Kaduna to discuss how we can advocate for peace begining from the home using our family structure, contributing and understanding those values that we get from our home.
“Part of the discussions today has been the reflection of yesterday where children belong to everybody but today it’s not like that, instead we fight each other. What we are having in the society today is as a result of losing our family values.
“Let us begin to talk to Mothers because they have a magic way of talking to the children, husband, fathers, brothers so we hope that this efforts will help in the restoration of peace and this will also help to cut off children from being recruited by bandits or Violent Extremists.”
The Country Director also disclosed that 120 women were selected from different communities in Kaduna and Kano states, meanwhile he assured that the Foundation will continue to advocate for more voices of women until Kaduna and Nigeria return to her good old days of Peace and good family values.
