Democracy Sierra Leone (DSL) on Wednesday launched 112 constituencies violence prevention forum at the Presidential Lounge of the National Stadium, Brookfields in Freetown.
DSL noted that in the lead up to elections they had been working to create a set of techniques and approaches to be used in monitoring electoral conflicts.
The civil society coalition pointed out that in addition to recruiting and training of local staff on how to prevent violence, they would monitor incidents of election related violence by creating a database to track incidents of violence during the elections.
DSL informed that they had trained 85 people from all over the country on conflict mitigation and that 50 of these trainers were selected to carryout a 14-district level training on a special conflict resolution method dubbed PALS-an acronym meaning Pause. Assess. Listen and Solve.
The 40 civil society group strong coalition informed that a total of 420 stakeholders were also trained in all of the 14 districts on PALS and that these people were also expected to use the skills not only for any conflict resolution during the August elections but to settle other conflicts outside electoral activities.
DLS stated that they were concerned that, “even the least conflict situation of malice is a recipe for trouble,” and that it was the reason they were calling on all leaders and members of political parties and other stakeholders to employ the PALS’ methodology so that all Sierra Leoneans would have a conflict-free elections.
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