Peace forum launched

The Liberia Peace Forum (LPF), a UN-funded project which aims to forge peace throughout the country, was launched this week in Monrovia, a spokesman for the Togo-based UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa, (RCPDA) told IRIN on Thursday. RCPDA Director Richard Ivor Fung said the LPF aimed to prepare a peace education curriculum for schools, colleges and universities in Liberia. "We like to think that peace can be taught in schools like any other subject, such as history, geography or maths," Fung said. "Educationalists and peace experts, nominated by a preparatory committee set up by the Liberian government, will attend a workshop in Monrovia in November to bring together the elements needed for such a curriculum." The LPF was launched on 27 July at the University of Liberia. One of the speakers at the launch, organised in collaboration with the UN Peacebuilding Support office in Monrovia and the Liberian Ministry of Education, spoke of the need for "firm and urgent action in the building of bridges for peace in West Africa." Professor Togba-Nah Tipoteh, an economist and President of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA), also said the recent ending of conflicts in Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia was "not peace, but a cessation of armed hostilities," and he called for a credible justice system to protect people's basic human rights. The LPF, Fung said, is one of the activities of the UN Programme for Coordination and Assistance for Security and Development. The programme was set up to support the implementation of the Moratorium on the Importation, Exportation and Manufacture of Light Weapons in West Africa, signed by Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) heads of state in Abuja, Nigeria, in October 1998.