International Day Of Peace - Buea, Cameroon

September 21st, 2014

The International Day of Peace which holds every year on September 21st was created by the United Nations since 1982 by resolution 36/37 of the UN’s General Assembly. On this day activities usually go on around the world to promote peace.

In Buea, Cameroon this year the initiative was solely organized by Peace Revolution Cameroon which engaged the government and other stakeholders to share knowledge on peace while still upholding this year’s theme “The Right of Peoples to Peace”. It was the only seminar of its kind that took place on that day in Buea.
The event brought together different speakers to share peace from their perspectives. The main speakers were South-West Human Rights Director (Mr Tambe Tiku), Pastor of Presbyterian Church, Muea, Regional Commissioner of Territorial Surveillance (Mr Atanga Richard Anagho) Peace Architect and Country coordinator of Peace Revolution (Molinge Henry Nyoki), Barrister from Shalom Legal Consultance (Jr David Molinge) and the Divisional Officer of Buea (Kuam Wokam Paul).

The opening speech was given by the organizer of the event (Molinge Henry) which followed suit with presentations of peace from the different perspective as well as the history and meaning of the International Day of Peace itself. Five Peace Revolution videos were used as interludes throughout the ceremony so as to teach a lot without talking much. I gave a practical presentation of peace at the end leading a 10 minutes meditation exercise as a tool to achieve Inner Peace which is the bedrock of true peace. One participant, the principal of Government Teachers Training College Buea said “I had a back pain before the practice but after the meditation, I did not feel it again”.

Furthermore, valuable contributions as well as questions and answers came from the audience which was mostly dominated by people of the press, civil society organizations, business executives, law enforcement authorities, government officials and the general public. Mr Tambe Tiku of the Human Rights dep’t and board member of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) contributed “What we are embarking on as Human Rights is conflict prevention”.

At the end of the ceremony, the D.O of Buea gave an appraisal of the entire event and remarked “The young organizers of this event have put up a wonderful initiative. I will recommend that Peace Building should not be only for the international Day of Peace but everyday…that approach is people participating on the resolution of their problems so we don’t impose”.

In total, we were over 65 participants. Nine Peace Revolution T-shirts were offered in exchange of any amount. The money raised (90USD) was agreed instantly to be used to buy food to take to an orphanage as a sign of putting the Peace in Action. Other resource materials about meditation such as DVDs, stickers and brochures were shared free of charge to the public.