PESHAWAR: Social cohesion can contribute to social justice and participation besides peace and tolerance in the society, reveals a survey conducted in the Khyber and Orakzai tribal districts.

The study was aimed at examining the impact of a series of trainings provided recently to the people belonging to various walks of life.

In the survey, 80 per cent of the trained people revealed that they had been willingly cooperating with each other despite existing differences, which had been termed the best example of social cohesion.

Over 700 people of both the districts had been trained under Community Resilience Activity-North project funded by the USAID with the support of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and implemented by Islamic Relief Pakistan.

Over 700 trained in Khyber, Orakzai on conflict resolution, peace building

Those who imparted the trainings include local elders, peace committee and community members, farmers, civil society organisations, sportsmen and journalists.

Lead expert in conducting trainings and survey, Mohammad Haseeb Khan, told Dawn that the local elders and peace committee members were trained about conflict resolution, social cohesion, civic engagements and defusing tensions.

He said the sportsmen of Orakzai, mostly youngsters, were trained about leadership development, interfaith harmony and peace building. The members of the Bara Press Club were also trained on certain topics, particularly on the merger reform process.

Haseeb Khan said the goal of the training was to increase resilience of marginalised communities and populations to violent extremist influence.

Islamic Relief KP chapter area programme manager Mohammad Siddiq said that marginalised communities and populations, especially youth, would be more resilient to violent extremist influence after increasing the political, social and economic integration of targeted merged tribal area.

In the survey, 80 per cent of the trained people declared that positive relationship existed in community and within relatives due to social cohesion.

About causes of disputes, 77 per cent of the people in the survey said disputes in their areas erupted due to land-related issues.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2022