Peace and Culture Festival

The Mano River region in Western Africa covers Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and shares a border with Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Apart from the Mano River Union, which is an economic and trade union, there are few positive elements which unite these neighbouring states. Conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia involved massacres, rape, looting and amputation which not only destabilized those states, but also created 850,000 refugees that fled to neighbouring countries.

This Festival aimed to bring together country leaders, peace builders and artists from the region to unite and share their cultural history. Story tellers, singers, dancers and masked dancers paved the way for economic and political dialogue. In all 30,000 attended the three day event and hundreds of thousands listened to subsequent radio broadcasts.

Highlight:

Traditional leaders from the region discussed traditional land acquisition and alternative responses to solving disputes in order to lessen on-going tensions being felt amongst ethnic groups sharing borders.