The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, recently attended a regional meeting on armed violence and development in Kenya, under invitation from the Governments of Kenya and Switzerland and the United Nations Development Programme.
The workshop was held in Nairobi from 30-31 October.
The regional meeting for the countries of Africa was a follow up to the Geneva Summit on Armed Violence and development held in June 2006, at the conclusion of which forty-two states from all the regions of the world adopted the Geneva declaration on Armed Violence and development. From Africa the Geneva Declaration has been endorsed by Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and South Africa.
The regional meeting aimed to add regional African perspectives to the objectives and principles of the Geneva Declaration through the collective efforts of governments, multilateral organizations and civil society, in order to promote the prevention and reduction of armed violence within a development policy perspective.
