Traditional Peace Education and its Conflict Prevention Role among Indigenous Ghanaian Societies

Abstract

Among the varied United Nations (UN) conflict containment templates, the ‘Peace Education’ concept is of relative novelty. Nonetheless, it has proven to be an effective conflict prevention tool at all societal levels. However, long before its official acceptance as a conflict prevention mechanism by the UN, traditional peace education had deep roots in Africa where parents and society have consciously thought the youth the essence of peaceful coexistence. In particular, Ghanaian children at their early stages through to adulthood are taken through lessons of several virtues at home that include love, togetherness, equality, fairness, tolerance, forgiveness, hospitality, reconciliation, and the fear of God, amongst others in terms of peace education. This study examined the conflict-preventive role of traditional peace education in Ghana. Accordingly, the study used an exploratory mixed-method approach to seek the views of 30 participants qualitatively and 1456 respondents quantitatively. It also relied on the content analysis of secondary and tertiary sources using sociological and historical approaches. The findings are that peace education via both formal and informal channels has become a key conflict prevention tool of the United Nations, and peace education has the potential and prospects of preventing conflicts in the 21st Century. Further, Ghana is recognized globally as one of the most peaceful countries in the world as largely attributed to its adherence to traditional home-grown lessons on peace education. Following challenges regarding the fullscale implementation of both formal and informal peace education in Ghana, the paper amongst others recommend that peace education programs should be incorporated into the regular school curriculums, with the total commitment of the government in terms of implementation and funding. Moreover, to prevent conflicts at the local level, there is a need to build the capacities of communities in terms of knowledge and skills in peace education.