Ivan Zhakata
Herald Correspondent
Zimbabweans at home and abroad have a duty and responsibility to uphold the prevailing peace as the key ingredient to development and prosperity, Zimbabwe Peacebuilding Initiative (ZimPI) chairperson Senator Sekai Holland has said.
In a statement on the United Nations International Day of Peace, Sen Holland said this year’s 2023 UN theme anchored on attainment Sustainable Development Goals is a call to peace as a prerequisite for development.
The UN International Day for Peace is being celebrated this year under the theme: Actions for Peace: Our Ambition for the #GlobalGoals.
Sen Holland said it was a call to action that recognizes our individual and collective responsibility to foster peace.
“Fostering peace contributes to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals and achieving the SDGs will create a culture of peace for all,” she said.
“ZimPI salutes Zimbabwe for aligning its development blueprint National Development Strategy 1 with the SDGs. ZimPI now calls us all to go forward together, finding peacebuilding ways to consolidate this peace; within our homes, communities and nation, with a new focus: identifying that common ground that Zimbabweans share, as the basis to unite ourselves as a society.
“This unity opens us to recognise that unity of purpose is essential in society; it is a key ingredient for our sustainable development: for without development we cannot achieve equality. Let us all work together, mapping our way forward, in solution-based community conversations, flowing from our households, communities and into our Government’s national plan.”
Sen Holland said traditional values of uBuntu/Hunhu, embody our society’s values of justice and fairness for all.
“We could think about adopting these two values in our personal approach to those around us, to maintain this environment of hard won peace, still enveloping our country, empowering us to, as one, develop our beautiful Zimbabwe together,” she said.
“ZimPI salutes our President, for his Vision 2030 campaign messages: Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo. Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi balo.
“A country is built by its own people. The message opens our eyes and minds, to move ourselves away from the current prevailing, damaging, donor dependency syndrome.
“It is in this light that ZimPI also implores Zimbabweans from all walks of life to put the country first, by coming together to realise the Zimbabwean dream, united as one regardless of race, gender, religious or political affiliation.”
ZimPI focus is on mainstreaming the peacebuilding instrument, our foundation in all policies and programmes designed with/by disadvantaged households, in communities and at national, ensuring sustainability.
The marginalised, living in rural, peri-urban and urban areas are ZimPI development priorities.
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