What happens when a country tries to rebuild while still carrying the weight of unresolved grievances, economic hardship, disaster, political uncertainty and social division?
For NPC, the answer cannot be to wait for stability before beginning the work of reconciliation. It is in this challenging context that NPC has launched ACT NOW - Accountability, Cohesion and Trust for Non-discrimination, Ownership and Wellbeing, a new initiative designed to strengthen reconciliation, inclusion and democratic resilience across 12 districts.
The project's two-day orientation brought together 35 participants, including 14 women and 21 men, comprising project staff, district level facilitators and key stakeholders. The orientation represented a collective commitment to ensuring that peacebuilding, justice and inclusion remain part of the recovery process rather than being postponed until a future period of stability.
ACT NOW has emerged from a recognition that peacebuilding challenges are no longer confined to traditional conflict-related tensions. Communities are now navigating overlapping economic, ecological, social and political pressures. The orientation reflected on the devastating impact of Cyclone Ditwah in November 2025 that affected 1.4 million people and caused an estimated $4.1 billion in damage, equivalent to approximately 4% of the GDP. At the same time, the country is preparing to resume external debt repayments from 2028 under the IMF Extended Fund Facility, placing additional pressure on fiscal space. The project also anticipates that the political environment surrounding future national elections could heighten risks of polarisation and identity-based mobilisation. These pressures can deepen existing inequalities if recovery processes are not inclusive.
ACT NOW begins with a simple but powerful premise that reconciliation cannot wait for stability. When disaster recovery, land administration, livelihood rebuilding and political transitions are managed without sufficient attention to inclusion and dignity everyday grievances can deepen, public trust can weaken and unresolved injustices can be pushed further out of public discussion.
From the success of Plural Action for Inclusion, Reconciliation and Social Justice (PAIRS) to the next generation of peacebuilding, ACT NOW does not begin from zero. It builds on the experience and achievements of the PAIRS project, which demonstrated the potential of District Inter Religious Committees (DIRCs) as networks for advocacy, inclusion and social justice.
The achievements provided an important foundation for ACT NOW and reinforced a key lesson: when people from different religious and civic backgrounds work together through trusted local structures, they can become a powerful force for peace, social justice and inclusion. ACT NOW seeks to take this experience further from project-supported activities towards peace infrastructure and practices that can endure beyond individual funding cycles.
ACT NOW is built around three interconnected objectives. The first is managing local tensions. The project will strengthen DIRCs and develop youth mediators as first line peace infrastructure capable of responding to tensions connected to disaster recovery, land, livelihoods and political mobilisation. The second is embedding inclusion in state practice. Rather than focusing only on formal policy reform, ACT NOW seeks to encourage more inclusive, transparent and non-discriminatory behaviour among district and sub-district state actors. The ambition is to make consultation, fairness and inclusion part of everyday administrative practice. The third is safeguarding civic memory and public space. Economic recovery and political transitions should not push unresolved questions of justice and governance into silence. ACT NOW will therefore support continued narrative gathering and ethical reflection so that issues such as enforced disappearances and land dispossession remain part of responsible public engagement.
Connecting institutions, communities and the next generation, the scale of ACT NOW is deliberately broad. The project uses a three-tier stakeholder ecosystem. Across the 12 target districts, the project anticipates contributing to outcomes that can ultimately benefit more than 11 million people indirectly. Investing in women and youth has a particularly important role in ACT NOW's vision of sustainable peace. Women community leaders will be supported to strengthen local advocacy while newly elected women local government representatives will engage with questions of democracy and minority inclusion. Young people will be developed not simply as beneficiaries of peacebuilding but as community mediators capable of identifying tensions early and supporting constructive responses. This inter-generational approach is central to the project's sustainability strategy. Mediation skills that are locally relevant and transferable can continue to serve communities beyond the life of the project.
ACT NOW is implemented by NPC with Misereor as the principal funder and complementary support from CAFOD and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The partnership brings together organizations with complementary international commitments to human dignity, social justice, development, democracy and inclusion.
Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops' Organization for Development Cooperation, has worked for more than six decades to address poverty and support people across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) is the official overseas aid agency of the Catholic church in England and Wales and part of the global Caritas Internationalis network. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an independent, nonprofit foundation dedicated to strengthening democratic institutions around the world.
During the orientation, NPC staff also reviewed administrative, financial and reporting procedures to ensure that project implementation is transparent, accountable and compliant with organizational and donor requirements.