KARACHI, July 10: A group of about 25 youths — 12 from India and 13 from Pakistan — are attending a 12-day South Asian Peace Camp.

The subject of the camp is “Youth Without Borders and Peace Through Art, Film and Dialogue.” The participants, students aged between 15 and 20 years, are preparing a film on the subject theme of which is ensuring peace through interaction and easy travel and communication for the peoples of the two countries.

The 15-minute film, being shot as an activity during the camp, depicts a bus journey and would be screened at a local hotel on Saturday evening.

The camp has been organized by a non-political and organization — Youth Initiative for Peace (YIP) — at an educational institute located in a scenic area on the outskirts of the city.

The YIP’s Ragni Kidwai and Zohra Omar told Dawn at the camp that their almost one-year-old organization was established as a follow-up of a peace conference “Focus on Kashmir” which had been organized by the “Initiative For Peace” at the United College of Southeast Asia in Singapore in June 2002.

The YIPs, they added, were founded by the youths who had attended the conference after returning to their respective homelands. The YIP’s goal is to create permanent conflict-management programmes and facilitate initiatives for peace by linking networks of young people across the globe.

They said that the organization’s aim was to remove misconceptions, that had developed among the people of South Asia, by establishing a network of active and concerned youth force throughout each of these countries.

The YIP had also organized a peace camp “Focus on South Asia” in Lahore in December last year. They said that the camp had brought together 42 future peace-builders from the seven South Asian countries — Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives.

The week-long activities of the participants at the Lahore peace camp included dialogue on conflicts in the region, conflict-management skill training and the use of art and expression in peace-building.

The ongoing Youth Without Borders camp (July 1-12) is part of the efforts aimed at maintaining the momentum that had been achieved last December by reaching out an additional young peace-builders force and to further the work, initiated in Lahore about six months back, by bringing the former YIP pace-builders to this camp as facilitators.

They said that the participants had been divided into six groups — film making, creative writing, photography, music and song, drama and art & set-designing.

Names of some of the facilitators who are assisting the youths in different fields are Asim Akhtar (photography), Maheen Zia (film director), Huma Muljee (art and set-designing), Mohammad Naqvi (film making).

Names of the Indians participating in the camp are: Amit Shrivastav, Skanda Gopal, Maimoona Imroze, Amala Yatla, Pavitra Chalam, Rashmi Bhure, Akshata Joshi, Sairekha Sureshkumar, Hormuz Masani, Pranhita Sen, Harsh Rana, Nihal Chauhan.

Lalita Ramdas and Sagari Ramdas, wife and daughter, respectively, of Admiral (r) Ramdas, a former president of the Pakistan-India Peace Forum, and Ruzbeh Masani are also among the Indian participants of the camp.