Sustaining peace in Malawi
In Malawi, UNDP has engaged volunteers as monitors, mediators and educators as part of a project to strengthen institutional capacities for sustaining peace and social cohesion. District Peace Committees (DPCs) made up of community volunteers have been involved in the successful mediation of local conflicts and electoral disputes in the districts of Karonga, Kasungu, Magochi, Nkhata Bay, Nsanje, and Salima. As part of the project, youth volunteers also monitored violent unrest during the 2019 national elections, providing data to a central platform that enabled the DPCs and civil society groups to work with the United Nations system to proactively engage in dialogue and mediation. The project is currently working to set up DPCs in other districts of Malawi.
200 youth volunteers monitoring COVID-related conflicts are also tasked with documenting local innovations in the COVID-19 response. Covering remote areas of Malawi, the volunteers work with UNDP Malawi’s Accelerator Lab to gather and track local responses to COVID19, enabling innovations that might otherwise go unnoticed, to access support and be scaled up beyond the local level.
