The Church and Civil Society Forum (CCSF) is a collaborative platform of the Church and civil society formed to address what they believe to be the absence of a national institutional, policy and legislative framework to address past injustices and human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
The CCSF was formed as a result of meetings between the National Association of Non-Governmental organisations, the Christian Alliance, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, the Counselling Services Unit, Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, other civil society organisations and Heads of Christian Denominations, at the National Healing Consultative Forum in Kariba, in 2009.
CCSF implements its peacebuilding work in collaboration with its members and partners through three thematic areas. The first of these is community mobilisation, where activities focus on behavioural and attitudinal change of targeted communities regarding violence, and the benefit of tolerance on the socio-economic development of society.
The second is capacity building, where the focus is on strengthening the capacity of stakeholder groups to engage effectively in building and sustaining peace at community and national levels.
The third is violence prevention, in which the focus is to strengthen existing violence prevention mechanisms as well as support the creation of new tools for combating violence both at national and community levels.
As well as dealing with political conflict CCSF also focuses on other sources of conflict such as resources, the environment and domestic. The organisation also played a role in making the government establish the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.
