MONROVIA, March 14 (LINA) – The President of the University of Liberia (UL) has urged Liberians to understand that reconciliation is a process and not an event, requiring that the people must find a way to reconcile themselves and collectively move to the national level.
Dr. Julius Sarwolo Nelson, making remark at the start of a two-day reconciliation forum in Monrovia recently, said that as a country it is time that the dialogue be focused on children, women, teachers, and other young people, because these are groups that experienced the brunt of the civil crisis.
In an effort to identify and translate local and national assets into practice, the University of Liberia Institute of Policy Studies and Research, the Bread for the World Liberia (BFTW), Civil Peace Service (CPS) Partners, and the Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and State Building (CSPPS) jointly organized a National Conference on Reconciliation and Social Cohesion under the theme: « Pathways to National Reconciliation and Social Cohesion in Liberia. »
The conference is premised on two critical assumptions: 1 Challenges confronting Liberia, including the current poor economic situation, may be overcome when Liberians pursue genuine national reconciliation and leverage national and local resources, capacities and structures; and (2) If Liberians, adopting a conflict transformation attitude can identify and genuinely discuss the nature, sources, and factors that have undermined national reconciliation and social cohesion over the years.
According to Dr. Nelson there is not a pathway for national reconciliation and social cohesion without these institutions being involved, adding that by bringing these groups together, will allow them to talk and dialogue about the kind of reconciliation they are looking forward to seeing in Liberia in the next 10 to 20 years.
Nelson mentioned that he believes that they should find these global institutions and groups to be the first platform for their dialogue in finding pathways for national reconciliation and social cohesion.
He said politicians should let go of the past and should not believe that they are captive of it, in which they should find a new pathway on how they want to govern the country for the betterment of all.
For his part, Executive Director, Liberia Peace building Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Edward K. Mulbah, who proxy for the Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that if social cohesion is not grounded in all that Liberians do as an ultimate outcome as government and partners, the country is going to get nowhere.
He added that the root cause of war in any country is when people are feeling disenchanted about the issue of corruption, mismanagement of government resources, weak relationship between the State and the citizens, noting that all these are factors that contribute to war.
Mulbah stated that in order to have a national reconciliation, there are four principles that need to be identified, which include Peace, Truth Telling, Forgiveness and Justice.
« We must sit on the roundtable and talk, people should be able to give account for what they did, unless we have the principle of truth telling, then there will be forgiveness and then Justice, » Mulbah indicated.
