The Upper East Regional Chairman of the Peace Council, Alhaji Sumaila Issaka, has commended the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG) and its partner, the West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP-Ghana) and the European Union (EU) for contributing to ensuring peace at the just-ended presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana.

It would be recalled that with funding support from the EU, the YHFG under the WANEP-Ghana Electoral Violence Monitoring, Analysis and Mitigation (EMAM) project, implemented series of activities including organizing the youth of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) on November 5, 2020, to embark on joint route match and music concert during which they signed a peace accord committing themselves to peace before, during and after the election.

Alhaji Issaka stated that the programme which brought together over 200 participants made an impact of ensuring a peaceful election. He also mentioned that the collaboration of YHFG with the security agencies to identify hotspots in the region through the EMAM project further contributed to preventing major election conflict in the area.

"We as stakeholders were also delighted to see how the main political parties engaged each other in a friendly manner during the joint route match and music concert. The implementation of the EMAM project actually translated into ensuring the peaceful conduct of the election in the Upper East Region and are grateful to YHFG, WANEP-Ghana and the EU, the funding agency for this success story," said the Regional Chairman of the Peace Council.

While commanding the youth of the various political parties for conducting themselves very well towards ensuring peaceful election, the Regional Chairman, entreated them to see themselves as brothers and sisters and to continue to leave in peace and harmony as they were the future leaders of the country.

Addressing the stakeholders at the Bolgatanga Catholic Social Centre after the route match, the Executive Director of YHFG, Priscilla Nyaaba, explained that the peaceful election forum which also brought together the Ghana Police Service, NCCE, Political Party, Regional Peace Council, National Youth Authority, Regional Coordinating Council, and other CSOs under the theme, "Ensuring Violence Free-Elections in Bolgatanga: The Role of Young People", clearly demonstrated YHFG’s commitment to youth development in a violent free society.

The representative of WANEP-Ghana, Mr Noble Alagskomah, stated that Ghana had chalked a lot of successes in the arena of organizing peaceful elections and nothing should be done to mar the elections.

He entreated the various political parties, youth groups, to be abided by the composed peaceful election songs from the young music celebrities, Soorebia and Hasslar, who thrilled the audience to wonderful performances at the event.