*Reels Out Achievements
From Olatunji Omirin, Maiduguri
Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development has reeled out its achievements under its 10-month Transitional Justice Project, as it winds up the project, which it created as a veritable facility for guaranteeing justice to all the stakeholders across the Boko Haram-troubled Lake Chad Region.
Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development, is a humanitarian services and Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that supports government and organizational peace building process in the Lake Chad Region.
It launched the Transitional Justice project publications on the evaluation of its general research surveys to mobilize Borno stakeholders to develop transitional justice and reconciliation policy recommendations in North-East Nigeria.
The Executive Director of the Foundation, Hamsatu Allamin, said the Transitional Justice policy has drawn up a set of recommendations to Borno government, and government of lake Chad Basin regions for implementation to guarantee across-board justice for all the stakeholders in the 12-year violent conflict.
She was speaking at s function marking the end of the project, which had the theme: End of Project Dissemination of Lessons and Good Practices.
“We have executed this project for the past 10 months and we can now tell our stakeholders what we have done, the kind of activities we have undertaken, what we have achieved in terms of successes, challenges and how to move forward,” she noted
“Everyone is a victim of this crisis, you are a victim and I am a victim; may be if we can’t forget at least let us forgive one another and allow peace to reign so that we can move forward,” Allamin said, maintaining, “We all need peace.”
She said the project consisted of series of projects and activities, including research surveys , workshops, dialogues, discussions and interviews, which were put together for public consumption.
She added that the project goal included understanding community perceptions on the requirements for possible transitional justice approaches in the North-East.
The project objectives, she said, included assessing community perceptions of the preconditions and entry points for reconciliation with individuals associated with violent extremist groups as well as advocating and advising stakeholders on the development of a transitional justice and reconciliation approach in targeted areas.
On economic empowerment, the executive director said the foundation has provided startup kits to 30 de-radicalized women.
She said the project also created a network of implementors and practitioners on the reintegration and Transitional Justice in North-Eastern Nigeria under which it convened monthly review meetings of community stakeholders for perception, mapping survey report with recommendations for TJ programming.
Hamsatu Allamin explained further that the key project outputs included communication and stakeholders engagement plan on transitional justice, where it published stories of 40 survivors conflict that have been compiled.
She said several pamphlets of the foundation engagements with all categories of stakeholders have been produced into a manual engagement with radicalized women and children, social and behavioral change and communication messages in local languages.
Another key achievement was the updating of database with over 5000 cases of mothers, wives of victims, former detainees – men, women,boys/girls, abductees, children born in captivity, detention and early marriage/divorce.
