Capacity Building:

Religious Leaders Trained On Humanitarian Actions

By Boris Esono in Buea

Participants at the LUKMEF workshop in Buea

Some 100 community level religious authorities from different denominations in the South West region have received a two-day training on humanitarian actions, GBV, Child protection response services and UNICEF specific interventions.

                Organized by LUKMEF and UNICEF, the training falls within the framework of the UNICEF project “Strengthening community-based mechanisms for the prevention of and response to child protection and sexual Gender-Based violence risk for children and adolescents at risk in the South west and North west regions of Cameroon.”

                Aimed at getting religious leaders properly informed and fully involved in humanitarian response, participants shared ideas on how to spread the message to their Christians and worshippers so as to contribute in finding long lasting solutions to the present socio-political tension in the SW and NW.

                According to the CEO and founder of the Martin Luther Memorial Foundation, LUKMEF, Tanyi Christian, the purpose for disseminating this relevant information and training to the religious leaders is timely as it is geared toward enabling them put an end to the crisis by preaching and carrying out humanitarian actions in their various Churches and communities as a whole.

                “We are in a humanitarian crisis with humanitarian response and since religious leaders are found in almost every community and going by the principle of accountability to affected population, it requires that those affected by the crisis towards whom we are providing humanitarian assistance as a humanitarian community should be involved in program designing, implementation and evaluation,”  Tanyi Christian noted.

                He added that realizing that religious leaders were not properly integrated in humanitarian response and child protection programs, they saw the need to mobilize and engage them to fully understand who the humanitarian actors are, how they work and how to be able to participate in humanitarian response.

                   Humanity, Impartiality, neutrality, operational independence and do no harm he added are the five core principles of humanitarian community. Most importantly he stressed on the aspect of neutrality as it will go a long way to strike a balance in the various communities. Tanyi christian urged the religious authorities to add humanitarian principles in their weekly sermons and homilies.

                According to Rev. Cyprian Ajim Yuh, participant, parish pastor of Presbyterian Church Muea, the training has helped him in particular gain knowledge on how to handle internally displaced persons in his area. “With the knowledge and connections gained from this enriched training, my Christians and the community as a whole would be drilled on the five core principles of humanitarian actions and how to implement them in such a crisis period”.

                LUKMEF in its mission to promote peace and social justice, partners with UNICEF through shared common values towards child protection in response to the needs of children and adolescents affected by the crisis.

                UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of Children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand the opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF also promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child and they work in 190 countries and territories to translate commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children to the benefit of all children.

                It is important to note that a similar training took place in the North West region to train some other 100 religious leaders on humanitarian actions. The trainees characterized of Imams, Pastors and Priests were trained on Humanitarian principles, GBV response services, Child protection response services, understanding ethical referral for safe and adequate service access for UASC and survivors and the role they have to play in referral and humanitarian response service access.