By Daniel Nwaeze
The Africa Peace Summit which brought over 150 young people from around Africa at the Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, was centered around youths pioneering discussions on peace building and countering violent extremism, ranging from developing initiatives, influencing mechanisms and leading mechanisms.
As a member of the African Youth Movement (AYM) and a Media and Information Literacy (MIL) advocate, I was privileged to facilitate a side event/workshop on “Roles of Media in Peacebuilding”. During the workshop, we raised media’s role in 4 key areas:
- Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)
- Governance and Election
- Gender Based Violence
- Youths and Social/Political Movements
The goal was to engage participants to take concrete actions towards maximizing media tools to promote peace and counter violent extremism at personal, organizational and national levels, including collectively on a continental level.
Participants were later divided into groups along personal or organizational lines of interest on the themes to develop calls to action after which we immediately started implementation.
Closing the workshop, we guided them towards the following the following mantra:
- If terrorist groups can use media for terrorism and violent extremism, we can use it for peace building and countering violent extremism.
- Media can shape perceptions, move people towards action and call governments to action as we saw in the case of the Arab Revolution in North Africa, #BringBackOurGirls in Nigeria, #ArrestKoffiOlomide in Kenya and #FeesMustFall currently in South Africa.
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