PEACE EDUCATION

Mary Ellen Altavano

“ “THE HIGHEST EDUCATION IS THAT
WHICH DOES NOT MERELY GIVE US
INFORMATION BUT MAKES OUR LIFE
IN HARMONY WITH ALL EXISTENCE.”
”
– Rabindranath Tagore
WHAT IS PEACE?
 PEACE
• • a state of tranquility or quiet, such as freedom from civil disturbance, a
state of security or order within a community provided for by law or
custom
• • freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions
• • harmony in personal relations
• • a state or period of mutual concord between governments
• • used interjectionally to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or
farewell at peace
PEACE AND SECURITY
 WHAT DOES THE UNITED NATIONS
DO?
• 1. Maintain international peace and security
• 2. Protect human rights
• 3. Deliver humanitarian aid
• 4. Promote sustainable development
• 5. Uphold international law
 1. MAINTAIN INTERNATIONAL
PEACE AND SECURITY
• . The UN does this by working to prevent conflict; helping parties in
conflict make peace; peacekeeping; and creating the conditions to allow
peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should
reinforce one another, to be effective.
1. SECURITY COUNCIL - takes the lead in determining the
existence of a threat to the peace or an act of aggression
2. GENERAL ASSEMBLY - the main deliberative, policymaking,
and representative organ of the UN.
 HOW DOES THE UN MAINTAIN
INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND
SECURITY?
• UNIFIL - A UNIFIL peacekeeper from Spain on a regular patrol in the vicinity of Al Wazzani, south-
eastern Lebanon as the sun sets in the horizon. Since 1948, more than a million women and men have served as
UN peacekeepers. In places like Lebanon, peacekeepers protect civilians against violent attacks and
support the delivery of crucial humanitarian assistance.
• Preventive Diplomacy and Mediation - The most effective way to diminish human suffering and the
massive economic costs of conflicts and their aftermath is to prevent conflicts in the firstplace. The
United Nations plays an important role in conflict prevention, using diplomacy, good offices, and
mediation. Among the tools the Organization uses to bring peace are special envoys and political missions in
the field.
• Peacekeeping - has proven to be one of the most effective tools available to the UN to assist host countries
navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace. Today's multidimensional peacekeeping operations are
called upon not only to maintain peace and security, but also to facilitate political processes, protect
civilians, assist in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants; support
constitutional processes and the organization of elections, protect and promote human rights and assist in
restoring the rule of law and extending legitimate state authority.
 HOW DOES THE UN MAINTAIN
INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY?
• Peacebuilding - United Nations peacebuilding activities are aimed at assisting countries emerging from
conflict, reducing the risk of relapsing into conflict and at laying the foundation for sustainable peace and
development. Commission with strategic advice and policy guidance, administers the Peacebuilding Fund
and serves the Secretary General in coordinating United Nations agencies in their peacebuilding efforts.
• Countering Terrorism - The United Nations is being increasingly called upon to coordinate the global fight
against terrorism. Eighteen universal instruments against international terrorism have been elaborated
within the framework of the United Nations system relating to specific terrorist activities. In September
2006, UN Member States adopted the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. This was the
first time that Member States agreed to a common strategic and operational framework against terrorism.
• Disarmament - The General Assembly and other bodies of the United Nations, supported by the Office
for Disarmament Affairs, work to advance international peace and security through the pursuit of the
elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and the regulation of conventional
arms.
 2. PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS
• The term “human rights” was mentioned seven times in the UN's
founding Charter, making the promotion and protection of human
rights a key purpose and guiding principle of the Organization.
• In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought human
rights into the realm of international law. Since then, the Organization
has diligently protected human rights through legal instruments and on-
the-ground activities.
 HOW DOES THE UN PROMOTE
AND PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS?
• High Commissioner for Human Rights - The High Commissioner for Human Rights
regularly comments on human rights situations in the world and has the authority to
investigate situations and issue reports on them.
• Human Rights Council - the key independent UN intergovernmental body responsible
for human rights
• Human Rights Treaty Bodies - The human rights treaty bodies are committees of
independent experts that monitor implementation of the core international human rights
treaties
• Special Procedures - The special procedures of the Human Rights Council are
prominent, independent experts working on a voluntary basis, who examine, monitor,
publicly report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific
perspective.
 WHAT LEGAL INSTRUMENTS HELP
THE UN PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS?
• The International Bill of Human Rights - The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948) was the first legal document protecting
universal human rights. Together with the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the three instruments form
the so-called International Bill of Human Rights.
• Democracy - based on the rule of law, is ultimately a means to
achieve international peace and security, economic and social
progress and development, and respect for human rights – the three
pillars of the United Nations mission as set forth in the UN Charter
 WHAT OTHER UN OFFICES AND BODIES ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS?
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights - is a milestone document in
the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and
cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was
proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December
1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements
for all peoples and all nations.
• Security Council - , deals with grave human rights violations, often in conflict
areas. The UN Charter gives the Security Council the authority to investigate and
mediate, dispatch a mission, appoint special envoys, or request the Secretary
General to use his good offices
 WHAT OTHER UN OFFICES AND BODIES ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING HUMAN
RIGHTS?
• UN Peace Operations - Many United Nations peacekeeping operations and
political and peace buidling missions also include the human rights-related
mandates aimed at contributing to the protection and promotion of human rights
through both immediate and long-term action; empowering the population to
assert and claim their human rights; and enabling State and other national
institutions to implement their human rights obligations and uphold the rule of law.
• Commission on the Status of Women - is the principal global intergovernmental
body dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the advancement of women.
 3. DELIVER HUMANITARIAN AID
• One of the purposes of the United Nations, as stated in its Charter, is "to
achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an
economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character."
• The UN first did this in the aftermath of the Second World War on the
devastated continent of Europe, which it helped to rebuild.
• The Organization is now relied upon by the international community to
coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and man-made
disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone.
 WHAT KEY UN ENTITIES
DELIVER HUMANITARIAN AID?
• Helping refugees - The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) emerged in the wake of World
War II to help Europeans displaced by that conflict. The agency leads and coordinates
international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide.
• Helping Children - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has strived to reach
as many children as possible with effective, low-cost solutions to counter the biggest
threats to their survival. UNICEF also consistently urges governments and warring parties
to act more effectively to protect children.
• Feeding the Hungry - The World Food Programme (WFP) provides relief to millions of
people, who are victims of disasters. It is responsible for mobilizing food and funds for
transport for all large-scale refugee-feeding operations managed by UNHCR.
• Healing the Sick - The World Health Organization (WHO) coordinates the international
response to humanitarian health emergencies.
 4. PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
• From the start in 1945, one of the main priorities of the United Nations was to
“achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic,
social, cultural, or humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect
for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race,
sex, language, or religion.”
• Improving people’s well-being continues to be one of the main focuses of the UN.
• The global understanding of development has changed over the years, and countries
now have agreed that sustainable development –development that promotes prosperity
and economic opportunity, greater social well-being, and protection of the environment
– offers the best path forward for improving the lives of people everywhere.
“ “PEACE CANNOT BE KEPT BY
FORCE; IT CAN ONLY BE
ACHIEVED BY UNDERSTANDING.”
”
– Albert Einstein
THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT
GOALS
 5. UPHOLD INTERNATIONAL LAW
• The UN Charter, in its Preamble, set an objective: "to establish conditions
under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other
sources of international law can be maintained".
• Ever since, the development of, and respect for international law has been a key part
of the work of the Organization.
• This work is carried out in many ways - by courts, tribunals, multilateral treaties -
and by the Security Council, which can approve peacekeeping missions, impose
sanctions, or authorize the use of force when there is a threat to international
peace and security, if it deems this necessary.
• These powers are given to it by the UN Charter, which is considered an
international treaty.
 WHAT IS PEACE EDUCATION?
• Peace education is the process of acquiring the values, the knowledge
and developing the attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in
harmony with oneself, with others, and with the natural environment.
• Ian Harris and John Synott have described peace education as a
series of "teaching encounters" that draw from people:
• • their desire for peace,
• • nonviolent alternatives for managing conflict,
• • and skills for critical analysis of structural arrangements that produce and
legitimize injustice and inequality.
 A HOLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF
PEACE
• • Peace is both the absence of personal / direct violence, and the presence of
social justice. The meaning of peace can be captured by the idea of a negative
peace and the idea of a positive peace.
• NEGATIVE PEACE
• Is the absence of violence or fear of violence
• POSITIVE PEACE
• Is the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful
societies.
• refers to the presence of just and non-exploitative relationships, as well as
human and ecological well-being, such that the root causes of conflict are
diminished.
 THE PILLARS OF POSITIVE
PEACE
• 1. a well-functioning government,
• 2. a sound business environment,
• 3. an equitable distribution of resources,
• 4. an acceptance of the rights of others,
• 5. good relations with neighbors,
• 6. free flow of information,
• 7. a high level of human capital,
• 8. low levels of corruption.
“ “PEOPLE IN THE LONG RUN ARE
GOING TO DO MORE TO PROMOTE
PEACE THAN GOVERNMENTS.”
”
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
 PEACE EDUCATION AS
TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION
• Peace education or an education that promotes a culture of peace, is essentially
transformative. It cultivates the knowledge base, skills, attitudes, and values that
seek to transform people’s behaviors that, in the first place, have either created or
exacerbated violent conflicts.
• It seeks this transformation by building awareness and understanding, developing
concern, and finally, challenging personal and social action that will enable
people to create conditions and systems that actualize nonviolence, justice,
environmental care, and other peace values.
 WHY EDUCATE FOR PEACE?
• Betty Reardon (Comprehensive Peace Education: Educating for global Responsibility,
1988) reminds that peace education has an important social purpose: it seeks to
transform the present human condition by “changing social structures and patterns of
thought that have created it.”
• • Learning to Abolish War; Teaching toward a Culture of Peace (Reardon and Cabezudo,
2002), the main purpose of peace education are the elimination of social injustice, the
rejection of violence and the abolition of war.
• • Peace education is a practical imperative.
• • Educating for peace will give us in the long run the practical benefits that we seek. As stated
earlier it is expected to build a critical mass of people who will demand for and address the
needed personal and structural changes that will transform the many problems that
relate to peace into nonviolent, humane and ecological alternatives and solutions.
“ “OBSERVE GOOD FAITH AND
JUSTICE TOWARD ALL NATIONS.
CULTIVATE PEACE AND
HARMONY WITH ALL.” ”
– George Washington
 INTEGRATED THEORIES ON
PEACE EDUCATION
• Peace education activities promote the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will help
people either to prevent the occurrence of conflict, resolve conflicts peacefully, or
create social conditions conducive to peace.
• Core values of nonviolence and social justice are central to peace education.
Nonviolence is manifested through values such as respect for human rights, freedom and
trust. Social justice is realized by principles of equality, responsibility, and solidarity.
• In order to achieve these ideals, peace education programs across the world address a
wide range of themes. These include nonviolence, conflict resolution techniques,
democracy, disarmament, gender equality, human rights, environmental responsibility,
history, communication skills, coexistence, and international understanding and tolerance
of diversity.
 INTEGRATED THEORIES ON
PEACE EDUCATION
• Accordingly, peace education could be defined as an interdisciplinary area of education
whose goal is institutionalized and noninstitutionalized teaching about peace and for
peace.
• Peace education aims to help students acquire skills for nonviolent conflict resolution
and to reinforce these skills for active and responsible action in the society for the promotion
of the values of peace. Therefore, unlike the concept of conflict resolution, which can be
considered to be retroactive–trying to solve a conflict after it has already occurred–
peace education has a more proactive approach.
• Its aim is to prevent a conflict in advance or rather to educate individuals and a society for
a peaceful existence on the basis of nonviolence, tolerance, equality, respect for
differences, and social justice.
“ “THE HIGHEST EDUCATION IS THAT
WHICH DOES NOT MERELY GIVE US
INFORMATION BUT MAKES OUR LIFE IN
HARMONY WITH ALL EXISTENCE.”
”
– Rabindranath Tagore
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEACE
EDUCATION AND ITS BASIC PRINCIPLES
• The end of World War I (1914–1918) brought powerful support for the need for
international cooperation and understanding and helped instill a desire to include these
ideas in educational systems.
• The League of Nations and a number of nongovernmental organizations worked
together on these ideas, especially through the International Institute of Intellectual
Cooperation, an organization that was the predecessor of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
• World War II (1939–1945) ended with millions of victims and the frightening use of
atomic weapons against Japan, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEACE
EDUCATION AND ITS BASIC PRINCIPLES
• In 1946 UNESCO was founded as an umbrella institution of the United Nations, and
it was charged with planning, developing, and implementing general changes in
education according to the international politics of peace and security.
• The statute of this organization reinforced the principle of the role of education in the
development of peace, and a framework was created for including and applying the
principles of peace in the general world education systems.
• The cold war division of the world after World War II and the strategy of the balance of fear
between the so-called West and East blocs redirected the peace efforts.
• The peace movement began concentrating on stopping the threat of nuclear war, halting the
arms race, and encouraging disarmament.
• A 1996 book by Robin Burns and Robert Aspeslagh showed that the field and the themes
that are included in peace education are diverse. The diversity is evident in theoretical
approaches, underlying philosophies, basic methodology, and goals.
• Within the field of peace education, therefore, one can find a variety of issues, ranging from
violence in schools to international security and cooperation, from the conflict
between the developed world and the undeveloped world to peace as the ideal for the
future, from the question of human rights to the teaching of sustainable development
and environmental protection.
 ROLE OF YOUTH IN PROMOTING AND
MAINTAINING PEACE IN THE
COMMUNITY
• A. Youth as peacebuilders
• According to Ozerdem A. (2006). The positioning of youth in society has a bearing on their
leadership potential and their possible role in peacebuilding.
• The tension between young and old has been one of the key features of inter-generational shifts
pertaining to the control over power, resources and people.
• The tension lies in the palpable impatience of youth, their desire to strive for more, their
willingness to be seen as responsible and capable, and the structural barriers to their
social mobility.
• Their social, political and economic navigation is about their identity transformation as well
as the negotiation or re-negotiation of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find
a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict environments.
• youth should be conceptualized and studied as agents of positive peace in terms of
addressing not only the challenges of physical violence, but also the challenges of
structural and cultural violence, and the broader social change processes to transform
violent, oppressive and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviour, relationships and
attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.
• The key point to remember is that without recognizing youths as political actors, their
trajectories in peacebuilding would likely be ignored, wasted and at best, under-
utilized. To recognize their agency as a political actor in peacebuilding, there needs to be a
comprehensive understanding of their conflict trajectories, and this is particularly important
for those young people who have taken direct participation in an armed conflict as
combatants.
 TO UNDERSTAND THE ENGAGEMENT
OF YOUTH IN PEACEBUILDING:
1. the youth mobilization and reintegration factors such as who they are, what they did
before the conflict, how they were recruited, what specific fighting roles they undertook,
what they experienced physically, socio-economically and psychologically, during the
armed conflict, and what „home‟ context they will be reintegrating into will all be
critical for the youth‟s trajectories in peacebuilding.
2. the involvement of youth in non-violent politics, and from a wider perspective, the
enablement of their political agency in a more positive and peace-oriented role in
post-conflict environments, is likely to depend on how these trajectories are shaped
by the overall political and governance context.
 TO UNDERSTAND THE ENGAGEMENT
OF YOUTH IN PEACEBUILDING:
3. the enablement of youth as an active agent in peacebuilding cannot be considered
without considering such challenges they tend to face due to the armed conflict such as
the loss of education, a lack of employable skills and the destruction of a stable family
environment. The wider socio-economic needs of youths are often ignored in post-conflict
contexts as they are not seen as a „vulnerable‟ group.
4. it is important to provide youths with training opportunities to take an active part in
peacebuilding. With their youthful energy and capabilities, and ability of adaptation to new
technological trends, for example, youths could act as mediators, community mobilisers,
humanitarian workers and peace brokers. Like any particular conflict affected population
group, the mobilization of youths‟ capacities requires a targeted and long-term approach.
“ “WHEN THE POWER OF LOVE
OVERCOMES THE LOVE OF POWER
THE WORLD WILL KNOW THE
PEACE” ”
– Jimi Hendrix