The most pressing long-term threat to stability in Sierra Leone, according to most sources, is the potential for political insecurity surrounding the elections of 11 August 2007.
Ninety-one percent of the country’s 2.8 million eligible voters have registered to cast a vote for their future. Fifty-six percent of them are under the age of 32 while women account for 49 percent.
So with the future of the country as stable as plutonium, where do you turn? Well, to the future, of course. With 56% of eligible voters under the age of 32, you must reach this group through music.
Ninety-one percent of the country’s 2.8 million eligible voters have registered to cast a vote for their future. Fifty-six percent of them are under the age of 32 while women account for 49 percent.
So with the future of the country as stable as plutonium, where do you turn? Well, to the future, of course. With 56% of eligible voters under the age of 32, you must reach this group through music.
"Music is one of the most important resources of Sierra Leone," said UNDP Resident Representative in Sierra Leone Victor Angelo. "Artists for Peace represent what is best about the country and the UN is proud to support them so that the message of peace reaches all the citizens of the country," he said.
The group calls themselves Artists for Peace, and they represent more than a dozen well-known area musicians who will be touring the Sierra Leone countryside in a series of peace-promoting concerts.
Akin to anti-war activism @ UC Berkeley in the '60s, the Chicano Student Movement in the 70s, or the Tiananmen Square protests of the late 80s, the message being promoted by Artists for Peace is best described by their spokesman, Haroun Ahkim Dumbya a.k.a. Wahid. "If we pick up guns and fight each other again then the country will break. We want to be part of the making."
The current cabinet was appointed following the May 2002 presidential and parliamentary elections. Since that date there have been several changes.
Sierra Leone is one of the first beneficiaries of the United Nation’s new Peacebuilding Fund, launched last October to ensure that countries emerging from war and conflict do not relapse back into strife. Let us keep the country in our prayers.
