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Women and Girls in Preventing Violent Extremism in Northern Ghana

WACCE trains more than 200 women and girls in PVE in Northern Ghana. Whilst violent extremism continues to grow in complexity and in geographical coverage, Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) programing and state counter terrorism measures have largely been focused more on males, almost at the exclusion of women and girls. Recent PVE experience however has shown that success in PVE will be hard to achieve without the full participation of women and girls. Women and girls play a defining and fundamentally unique role in recruiting, detonation of IEDS in areas that may be considered hard to reach areas for men and are effective intelligence gatherers. 

It is against this background that, the West Africa Centre for Counter-Extremism (WACCE) with funding support of the US Embassy in Accra embarked on this project to build the capacity of female youth to effectively work to build resilience against VE. The two-day capacity building workshops brought together 200 women and girls including 10 males. Participants were educated on Violent Extremism and Radicalization, Ethical and Responsible Leadership, Conflict Production and Conflict Resolutions Mechanisms, Women in Violent Extremism, Human Rights and Gender Based Violence, Citizenship, Volunteerism and Community Service.

The uniqueness of this program is in the fact that it employed innovative tools such as group discussions, debate, simulation and role play. It mostly featured female facilitators and alumni of the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) who led participants as facilitators and moderators for debates. Participants have been absorbed into WACCE Peace Network which allows to continue to engage in discussions around the project.

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