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Peaceful Coexistence

The psychosocial well-being of individuals and the effective functioning of communities and societies are affected by individual and collective responses to experiences such as violent conflict, sexual and gender based violence as well as physical, political, socioeconomic and other stressors like climate change and environmental degradation and their impact on displacement.
Peaceful coexistence promotes psychosocial well being and can prevent mental health illnesses. In a community where there are frequent disruptive events during conflict, people may experience temporary mental health challenges especially when the experiences are perceived to be life threatening. These can result in changes in the way the affected people think, feel and behave, and can affect their ability to maintain positive relationships with others. People might assume negative views of themselves, others or the world. They might struggle to feel positive emotions and develop negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and behaviour that is harmful for themselves or others. Children can also be affected by parental exposure to harmful difficult experiences that occurred before they were born.
Accumulated trauma can influence the reasoning, behaviour and attitudes people bring with them to the peace building process and disrupt peaceful coexistence. People whose mental health is negatively affected tend to withdraw, blame themselves or struggle to relate with others. The consequences such as severe mental health problems or broken relationships need to be repaired in order to support the effective design and functioning of structures and institutions that are established as part of peace building activities.
It is therefore important for the youth, who make up the majority of the population in our communities, to be vigilant about maintaining peaceful coexistence within our communities as it pursues a goal and a process to build a common vision ensuring that the needs of the population are taken into consideration, which entails preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflicts, addressing root causes, assisting conflicting parties to end hostilities, ensuring reconciliation and moving towards recovery, reconstruction and development. 


By 
Emmanuel Osiro
Conflict Resolution And Humanitarian Assistance, Visual Artist, DFH-RC. 

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