The Liberia Crusaders for Peace (LCP) and the National Secretariat of the National Kukatornon Peace Festival Initiative in collaboration the Ministries of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism, Foreign Affairs, Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Internal Affairs, will on Friday, August 18,2023, host a Kukatornon Peace Festival program commemorating the 2023-Edition of the National Kukatornon Peace Festival Initiative in celebration of 20-Years of Peace in Liberia, at the EJS Ministerial Complex, Oldest Congo Town in Monrovia.
According to a recent LCP release, the notable annual event will begin at 8:00am with a parade and will end at the EJS Ministerial Complex where the official program will start at 11:00am. The LCP and organizers of the festival event have dubbed the theme of the event as “Liberia @ 20-Years of Uninterrupted Peace, Let’s Maintain the Peace.”
Distinguished guests from the neighboring countries (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria for the role played) are expected to be in attendance together with prominent stakeholders and ordinary citizens.
The event is being held in collaboration with MARWOPNET, WIPNET, WONGOSOL , Liberian Women Mass Action for Peace and Signatories of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement with support from ECOWAS, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, United Nations of YIsrael-USA, Peace Building Office, COPPWIL, Family Paradise and other partners.
The National Kukatornon [“We Are One”] Peace Festival is an annual peace initiative designed by LCP and a collaborative effort with national and development partners to promote sustainable peace in Liberia.
The peace festival initiative serves as a unique platform for national leaders and development partners to articulate messages of peace, especially as the nation goes towards elections in October 2023.
This year’s festival event will celebrate 20-years of uninterrupted peace in Liberia since the end of the Liberian civil war in August 2003 and will also commemorate the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed on August 18, 2003 in Accra, Ghana – an instrument which documents the end of the Liberia’s 14-years civil war.
As revealed by a recent release, the LCP in consultation with its partners recognizes the importance of peaceful elections in Liberia which is crucial to the maintenance of peace in the sub region and the need to provide a platform where national and regional leaders can articulate messages of peace cannot be overemphasized as per the Farmington Declaration for Peace during these elections.
The comprehensive Accra Peace Accord brought to an end 14 years of unprecedented civil war in Liberia that saw over 200,000 dead and hundreds of thousands to displace and refugee camps in neighboring countries.
Signatories to peace accord including the Liberia; the Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy,(LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia(MODEL).
Other signatories included the National patriotic Party, Unity party, Liberia People’s party, the National Reformation Party, the Liberia Action Party and Liberia Unification Party and the Labor Party, The Liberia national Union Party, the Equal Rights party, the Progressive People’s party and the New Deal Movement.
It is 20 consecutive years since the civil war ended in Liberia. The Liberia Crusaders for peace head by it visionary Executive Director, Culture Ambassador Juli Endee and partners have therefore taken the landmark decisions to celebrate the Kukatornon peace festival in commemoration of the 20 years of peace, to remind all Liberians that peace is the way forward.
