Peace education and mediation training in schools should be seen as a resourceful conflict prevention tool rather than merely a post-conflict reconciliation measure. That is my (not so humble) conclusion after, among other things, having heard the Swedish Public Service Radio’s story on how conflicts foreign to Sweden play out in local school corridors, geographically far from military clashes. Another contributing factor to this statement is my recent review of the reconciliation efforts in Kyrgyzstan after the inter-communal violence that occurred in the country in June 2010. Many of the reconciliation and confidence-building initiatives focused on youth participation as a means of building trust between communities, something which to me, made it clear that peace education should be seen as a crucial thread in the conflict prevention fabric, not only as a post-conflict band-aid.
Of course, at this specific time I’m also quite biased: I’m currently involved with the Foundation for Peace Studies Aoteaora (or just The Peace Foundation), a New Zealand NGO that mainly works with peace education and peer mediation programmes in schools. They also have a bilateral partnership with Pakistan, a country where education in itself is arguably threatened by violent conflict. Only recently, a bomb exploded next to a playground in the Pakistani city of Lahore, and the incident is not isolated, like in many other countries affected by violent conflict, schools and education facilities are being repeatedly targeted by armed groups. Given this evident threat, children and youth are oftentimes only seen as vulnerable victims of conflict. However, children’s potential as peacebuilders should not be underestimated.
Reducing violence, promoting peace
In March this year, a conjunction of international non-governmental organizations (Global Partnership for Children & Youth in Peacebuilding) published a report on children and youth as successful promoters of peace in conflict ridden communities. The report relied upon case studies from Colombia, DRC and Nepal, and its authors concluded that the integration of children and youth in peacebuilding projects contributes to lowering the incidence of violence and discrimination in the communities studied. Additionally, these programmes helped increase peaceful cohabitation and augmented the support given to vulnerable groups in the respective societies. The results of the report led the organizations to pinpoint three concrete recommendations for a more youth oriented peacebuilding approach, where children actively partake in promoting peace: “Number one, engage children as peacebuilders from a young age. Number two, encourage multi-pronged and multi-stakeholder efforts to support children as peacebuilders. And number three, engage with children and youth as partners in formal and informal governance and peace structures in a wide range of contexts, not only those affected by armed conflict.”
Children’s participation in peacebuilding endeavors isn’t a new addition to the reconciliation and trust-building arena. In Colombia, child and youth initiatives have been an integral part of the peacebuilding landscape for the last 20 years. In 1996, the UN, along with several national and international organizations, founded the Children for Peace Movement. This project was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, and according to the Global Partnership Report, it was “the first largescale initiative in Colombia promoting children as subjects with rights and not only objects of protection.” The movement arranged a nation-wide vote on human rights and peace issues, where, originally, it was thought that some three hundred thousand children would participate. The project grew rapidly, and more than 2.7 million Colombian children partook in the poll, many of them were from areas heavily affected by the ongoing armed conflict. Since then, impressive steps have been taken to include youth and children in decision-making processes on both the regional and national level. Last year, Colombia introduced a new law which aims to incorporate peace as a school subject nationwide.
Peacebuilding efforts aimed at youth have become increasingly widespread over time, and many international donors invest in such programmes. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, the majority of the reconciliation and peace-building projects in the aftermath of the violence in 2010 were aimed at youth and women. Among other initiatives, local religious associations began hosting summer camps for children from divided groups, and they arguably did so with quite good results, as the organizers later received financial aid from local authorities to pursue similar activities in schools. However, a persistent problem with the camps was that children from Uzbek families many times were too afraid to participate, resulting in clearly unbalanced groups in terms of community representation.
The Global Partnership report also calls for introducing peace education in countries that don’t suffer from armed conflicts. The authors argue that young people’s peacebuilding efforts enjoy a wider scope than the term traditionally implies, in the sense that their endeavours are aimed at combatting other forms of violence as well, such as domestic and gender based violence. “Children and youth have a broader concept of peacebuilding that is relevant beyond contexts affected by armed conflict,” the authors state. This is true in the case of Bolivia, where peace culture (Cultura de la Paz) is becoming an integral part of the country’s educational system. The concept is an adaptation of John Paul Lederachs theory on peacebuilding, meaning that, by changing how we understand conflicts we also foster change in our relationships, which then can contribute to change in our families, schools and wider communities. According to an evaluation published by the Berghof Foundation and the Bolivian “Support Programme for Decentralized Public Administration and Fight against Poverty” (PADEP) on the initiative, the immediate effects have been very positive, and the project has had a clear influence on how students and teachers perceive conflicts and manage them, as well as promoting constructive dialogues in schools.
Youth, radicalization and demographics The way young people are viewed in conflict contexts is highly significant: adolescents are often merely regarded as drivers of conflict, rather than effective peacebuilders. Some scholars have argued that when a large proportional share of a country’s population is young, this specific demographic feature is a significant contributing risk factor to the outbreak of violent conflicts. The Global Partnership report cites a research paper authored by Henrik Urdal in 2004: “Countries experiencing youth bulges of 35% run three times the risk of conflict compared to countries with youth bulges equal to the median for developed countries, all other variables at mean”. What’s noticeable here is the authors take on this factor, as they argue that: “Children and youth’s demographic abundance and greater malleability, along with powerful child and youth peacebuilding examples, suggest that they may be able to provide peacebuilding energy and actions that significantly accelerate the shifts needed to achieve and sustain durable peace in contemporary contexts impacted by or at high risk of armed conflict.” In December last year, the UN adopted resolution 2250 on youth and security, urging member states to include persons between the ages of 18 and 29 in decision-making processes and peacebuilding. Partly, this is seen as a means of combatting youth radicalization. Here, it seems as if peace education could play a significant role. In order to promote understanding, tolerance and avoid future violence, we must consciously integrate ways of dealing with conflict scenarios – and understanding conflictive issues – as a part of children’s learning experience in schools. This, because children have great potential as peacebuilders in conflict contexts, and because their involvement in peace activities diminishes the occurrence of other forms of violence in their communities.
Photo: David Stephenson & Charlotte Kesl / Flickr Creative Commons
2 Comments
Lisa
10/7/2016 01:43:44 pm
Hey S...intelligent and well written article! Loveeee xx
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Sandra
13/7/2016 01:42:36 am
Thanks Lisa! I'm glad you found it a rewarding read.
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