By Loretta B Manele

The two-day “Peacebuilding and Security Dialogue” ended on a high note at the King Solomon Hotel yesterday.

On Tuesday, the first day of the programme, Lottie Vaisekavea, permanent secretary for Ministry of Traditional Governance, Peace and Ecclesiastical Affairs opened the dialogue with a speech.

Afterwards, two sessions held were focused on classifying peacebuilding and security and finding out current conflict and security issues in Solomon Islands.

The third session was the “Introduction to Conflict Analysis Tools” of which participants were given presentations on analysis tools like “Root Cause Analysis and Stakeholder Mapping”.

Afterwards, participants went into session 4 in which they practised using the above tools before delivering their presentations about it.

Meanwhile, on the second and final day of the dialogue, sessions provided by the facilitators were; Identifying Key Conflict and Security Drivers and Entry Points for Peacebuilding and Security Interventions.

This was followed by four intense group activities which allowed participants representing the government, schools, local communities, churches and other organizations to actively contribute to discussions among themselves and with facilitators and learn from each other whilst forming new relationships among themselves.

The dialogue aims to generate interest in the development of a Community of Peacebuilding Practice (COPP) in Solomon Islands.

This programme was facilitated by Transcend Oceania and Conciliation Resources with funding support from UK-Integrated Security Fund.

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