PAC in peace-building initiatives
The Public Affairs Committee (PAC) for the past months has been conducting peace building and dialogue meetings in the Eastern Region districts of Mangochi, Machinga and Balaka. Among others, the influential quasi-religious group wants to popularise the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on hijab and peace messaging between Christians and Muslims. Our Reporter JONATHAN PASUNGWI caught up with PAC executive director Robert Phiri to shed more light on the peace-building and dialogue meetings.
Give us the background to these meetings
The peace-building project is part of Malawi’s peace architecture designed to embrace various interventions to promote peace in Malawi. So, PAC’s peace-building project serves as a stepping stone to the enhancement on conflict prevention as we inch towards the 2025 electoral process.
What is the link between peace-building and 2025 General Elections?
Elections by nature do not cause conflicts, but it is conflict triggers in the electoral process that ignite violent conflicts such as hate speech, misinformation on religious beliefs and lack of religious co-existence. So, PAC’s peace-building project also aims at enhancing dialogue and mediation among faith actors thereby strengthening capacities in religious institutions to manage conflicts at local level.
How does PAC resolve local and national conflicts?
PAC already has six-standalone mediators who have carried out mediation exercises since 2014 and 2019. However, PAC has had no district mediation teams reflecting the national structure. So, the peace-building project intends to strengthen such a structure from National, District to Zone levels.
Is the peace-building project linked to what we hear is a national strategy?
Yes. This peace-building project speaks to National Counter Terrorism and Prevention of Violent Extremism Strategy developed by the Government of Malawi.
Tell us more about this national strategy?
Specifically, the strategy document advocates to “promote dialogue, tolerance and understanding among civilisations, cultures, people’s and religions, and promote mutual respect for religions, notably that terrorist ideology can be inspired by multiple religious and non-religious factors rather than being associated with any single religion. It further advocates to “Create and strengthen existing institutions and mechanisms to enable such dialogue and outreach activities, including inter-faith, inter-religious and intra-ethnic related”. Hence, dialogue on dress code in particular Hijab and MoU popularisation in Eastern Region(Mangochi and Machinga) contribute to government strategy to promote increased dialogue, tolerance and understanding in Malawi’s approach to countering terrorism and preventing/countering violent extremism.
What activities has PAC implemented so far in relation to the peace-building project?
To date, PAC mediators have been holding meetings to examine scenarios for the 2025 electoral process, Joint Technical team (Christians and Muslims) to review Hijab MoU, workshops of MoU popularisation, and awareness activities have been implemented since 2022.
Your last words?
PAC commits itself to sustain its peace-building initiatives which entail youth early warning and women-in-faith funds permitting.
