Sharing Peace Education

Rights and responsibilities

I caught a bit of a programme on the BBC last week about Prince William (of Great Britain) and the commentator said that he was probably one of the few people of his generation who had been raised with a sense of duty.  I find that sad for a number of reasons.  One, that he doesn't have anything like the same freedom as the rest of his generation because of an accident of birth, but much more because the idea of duty (i.e. the acceptance of responsibilities) is so foreign a concept for his generation.  If you raise a 'me generation' what happens to the society?  I have a horrible feeling that we are seeing the results: somebody annoys you ("dissing you") then you shoot them or knife them.  Don't like their colour? - beat them up.

In Peace Education and Human Rights the idea of rights and their equivalent responsibilities is fundamental.  It used to be called socialisation.  One of the reasons for doing Peace Ed in refugee situations was because very often in refugee situations the social fabric has been destroyed or at least damaged and so socialistation had to be actually taught (and called peace ed).  But if the notion that "only I am important and nobody else counts for anything" then HR doesn't stand a chance.

We all know that if you dehumanise 'the other' then you don't have any responsibility for them as fellow human beings.  There are any number of examples: The Australian government and asylum seekers, most countries and refugees, "collateral damage" (where you don't actually say that these were people who died), marginalised groups who are excluded and then you can happily treat them as 'less than' becuase they are not the same as you etc. etc. But when each individual is convinced that only they have rights (and no responsibilities) and that those rights totally outweigh anybody else's concerns or rights, it seems to me that this is approaching meltdown.

At the risk of being biassed; it seems to me that we need peace ed more than ever.

A rose by any other name

Even though the UNHCR/UNESCO/INEE Peace Education Programme doesn't officially exist anymore there are new materials (including modules of work for secondary students) that have been printed and somehow distributed.  I hear of parts of the programme being implemented in all sorts of situations.

The funny (funny - sad - peculiar) thing is that more and more people want to do it but not call it peace education.  Big chunks of what is in the programme are being used in quality education teacher training and then we have "Healing classrooms" (essentially peace education) and Human Rights, citizenship and moral values - also peace education. 

Perhaps if we had changed the name it could have been implemented for longer?? 

One of the problems (also a great strength of the programme) was how comprehensive it is: a complete curriculum for primary school, a complete community programme and teacher and facilitator training.  Most people couldn't seem to handle something that was as comprehensive as that.  If we had just done one of those things...

I have seen programmes (well touted) that called themselves peace education but essentially involved just some stories that the children could read and relate to - the INEEPEP has that - but as a small component of the overall school programme.  Whole programmes that just involve teacher training (with no curriculum attached) - the INEEPEP had that as well...

As Francois said in a comment that I only just discovered, (Hi Francois - how wonderful to hear from you) people's lives were touched and perhaps changed because of the programme and if those people move on through their own lives and touch others... then the programme has been successful.

I hope so.

Point of contact

The people working in the field in peace education for UNHCR will all finish at the end of March.  This is a very sad time - not just for them but for the programme.  This means that this will be our point of contact: not just for those people but for all of us who work in the area either formally or informally and those who are interested in peace education.

My very best wishes and enormous gratitude to those who have worked with me over the years: Anne, Idriss, James, Vick and Zacharis.  There are of course hundreds more who have worked on the programme we call "ours" but these people are very special - they are the ones called the Peace Education Advisers.

My best wishes to you all (and to those with whom you work in the field) and please - let's stay in touch through this medium and share our thoughts and experiences.

A Dream of peace

In 1998, I fled the horrors of war that I experienced in my country, Sierra Leone.  I settled in one of the largest refugee camps located in Sinje (Liberia), hoping by then that life was going to be a different story.  In dismay, I was astounded to preceive that my compatriots again embarked on similar behaviour and attitudes that create conflict.

I then had a dream "to pursue a search for common solutions that settle the day by day discord in camps" and sending signals for home peace.  Again, I hope that peace and reconciliation will prevail in refugee camps, at home and in countries of conflicts...

I moreover question myself, was my dream timely? Not sure at that pretty moment.  Again, was such hoping a reality?  Perhaps it was just a visionary thing.  Until 1999, I was the headteacher in a camp school; and doubled as an "arbitrator".  Realistically, I arbitrated matters with the backing of the community, but without any real knowledge of conflict management procedures.  The school I headed was filled with ethnic divisions and both staff and pupils supported different warring groups in the country of origin.

Eventually as a school administrator, I was invited along with some teachers, to attend a week-long peaceeducation awareness workshop, which was organised by UNHCR and facilitated by Ms. Pamela Baxter, then senior PEP Co-ordinator for UNHCR, Geneva.

The enrichment of such a high standard introductory workshop and its analysing concepts made imprints to a group of selected participatns that represented each strata of the society.  Participants expressed much appraciation for the conduct of such a meaningful workshop, which was rated as very timely.

My interactive performance and contributions during the workshop perhaps spared me a place for further graduations in all segments of the programme.  My dream then emerged as a living reality.  In line with my inspiration, I deemed it worthwhile to sacrifice my precious time in a bid to promote life skills programme that stands to emancipate millions of fellow refugees on earth.  The wish to spread peace through learning and teaching is my challenge.

For camps iin Liberia, INEE/PEP stamped a place in the heart of every Sierra Leonean beneficiary in respect of the divine justice PEP plays towards their constructive living since the induction of the programme to what it is today.

By the end of 2003, my dream and hope became a reality.  Having undertaken three years of training as a trainer in education for peace, conflcit resolution and life skills, supported by a four year work experience in the same field, I got the job as National Peace Education Adviser in my country.

Here I work for, and with, a caseload of Liberian refugees who witnessed multiple cycles of violence, returnees who had similar experiences and host members who were sometimes burned in the fires of conflict.

Today all parties wish for such menace never to happen again if only they choose to work through achieveing peace and learning what peace is.

Nevertheless, there is no place like home.  Coming back home in peace and work for peace is my pride.

Idriss G. Mansaray, Sierra Leone.

My journey to peace: retracing the footsteps

My interest in peace-building began in 1991 when - as a second year undergraduate student at a local university in Kenya - I watched helplessly as images of refugees fleeing into Kenya from neighbouring countries (Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia) were beamed to the world.  The 1990s were years of civil strife in many countries of East Africa, the Horn and the Great lakes regions.  The situation escalated, and in the case of Somalia, resulted in collapse of the state.  In Kenya, seemingly stable at the time, this was also a time of political transition.  Like many other African countries, Africa was re-introducing multi-party democracy following the winds of change then sweeping the continent.  As a result ethnic tensions were ignited; fuelled by politicians waiting to reap political mileage.  "Tribal clashes" flared in some parts of the country.

I resolved then, that should I have the opportunity, I would work for peace.

It was not until 1997 that I had the chance to participate in a programme for students and young professionals organised by the UN refugee agency.  This programme was meant to give participants first-hand experience of a refugee situation and so highlight their plight.  "Camp Sadako" as it was appropriately called, was the initiative of the then High Commissioner Madame Sadako Ogata.  Along with eight colleagues from USA, England, Mexico, India and Japan, we went to Kakuma Refugee Camp in north-western Kenya where we were attached to various organisations and programmes for the refugees.  While in Kakuma, I attended a staff awareness workshop in peace education: a new education programme being introduced in these camps following requests from the refugee community. A UNHCR international consultant, Ms. Pamela Baxter, was facilitating.  In retrospect, my attendance at this workshop marked the beginning of peace-building as a field of specialisation and practice.

However the real opportunity to work in this area came in 1999.  I was recruited by UNHCR to work in the peace education project in the communities of Dadaab Refugee Camps in north-eastern Kenya.  With a second degree in education and professional courses in peace-building providing my theoretical base and fired by my passion for peace work, I was involved in peace education in Dadaab for three years, moving to Nairobi at the end of 2001 to co-ordinate the project regionally.

I have watched the project evolve from a programme initially designed for schools to a programme for the entire community, allowing youth women and the elderly to participate in its activities without any barriers.

Having now worked in the area for six years, I feel very strongly that the programme adds value to UNHCR's work.  It improves the quality of protection given to refugees and returnees by enabling education and community services sectors of UNHCR to develop and utilise the capacities within communities to proactively prevent and minimise violent conflict.  By adopting a rights-based approach it makes international legal instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women and the 1951 Refugee Convention concrete, practical and meaningful to conflict-affected people.

Above all, it enables peace to remain part of the public discourse even when conflict is at its peak.  The programme needs to be made more than just a programme for refugees and returnees.

I work in peace education because I believe that everyone can contribute to peace; however small the contribution and in whatever capacity.  Violent conflict should have no place in our countries today.  Conflict achieves nothing other than creating refugee populations and exacerbating other community problems such as gender inequities, HIV/AIDS scourge and a downward spiral of economic and environmental degradation.

V. S. Ikobwa

UNHCR-RSH, Nairobi

Seeing is believing

Hi there!  As you know, I was involved with the establishment of the UNHCR PEP, but had to retire in 1998. I was very upset.  But I have tried to publicise and fundraise since then.  Peace education is in the INEE standards, which is great; and I see that a new USAID publication on emergency education mentions PEP prominently in the text and has a 3 page description in an annex.

Unfortunately, organisations and people want to reinvent their own wheels.  And also with the UNHCR PEP, it is rather a case of seeing is believing.  Nevertheless, the proof that PE can be successful under very difficult circumstances is inspiring, and should be built on.

I am thinking of writing something called ‘Teaching as a guide to peace’, or a similar title, - and would be really interested to read of the field experiences as
they developed over the years.

I am also interested to know whether the PEP field advisers think that they can fulfil the ideas I developed in ‘Learning to Live Together’: - that all
children/people need education for peace, tolerance, human rights, citizenship, life skills (e.g. assertiveness and negotiation skills for sexual health), anti-bullying etc.  The idea that all these have common elements; and that the balance between skill ‘applications’ can be adjusted to take note of local
‘motivational’ factors as well as barriers (e.g. talk about sex and HIVAIDS is culturally unacceptable).

Would it be practicable to have a one-week workshop for teachers to pass on this information, as a way of helping them in their general work?

Hoping to learn more about the realities and possibilities for the future. 

Thanks, Margaret.

Prevention or cure?

Many years ago there was a discussion in a community workshop for peace education about why a conflict prevention approach was the one chosen for the (then) UNHCR Peace Education Programme.  Part of the reason, of course, was, that at the time, it was predominately a refugee programme and these people were not in a position to actually deal in conflict resolution in a major way (at least not the conflict that resulted in them becoming refugees).  But the major reason and one which has strengthened over the years is the "pool of petrol" argument.  This was the focus of the discussion all those years ago.  It goes like this:

There is a large pool of petrol (flammable fuel) on the ground.  I cannot actually do much about the fuel on the ground - it is too big and I don't have the skills or power to clean it up.  But then I have a choice: I can teach the people around me how to avoid the fuel and how to live with it being there or...

I can stand close to the fuel spill and strike matches and throw them on the ground.  Sooner or later one lit match will hit the fuel and ...whoosh!

The problem with many conflict resolution programmes is that it assumes that people have the necessary skills to deal with conflict.  Often, this is simply not so.  People do not communicate clearly, they do not listen effectively, they do not attempt to understand the other person's point of view, they cannot or do not analyse objectively and they cannot solve problems in a clear and constructive fashion.  Conflict resolution programmes often teach these things through actually dealing with conflict - but a trial and error approach can be very dangerous when it is conflict that we are dealing with.  More than that, I would ask whether people can actually analyse their own behaviour and say "this behaviour was constructive and helped to solve the problem but that behaviour was destructive and simply added to the problem".

So many people have spoken to me or others working in the programme over the years saying things like "I didn't understand that my behaviour added to the problems".  The reason that they could say that was because the Interagency Peace Education Programme actually teaches the constructive skills associated with peaceful living and then provides a space for practice and discussion.  It is this 'space' that helps people to internalise these skills and so helps the transfer of the behaviour to daily life.

This programme operates in both schools and in communities and hopefully if we can teach these skills on a broad enough basis, we could not only avoid the pool of fuel - but prevent it from spilling in the first place!

New Materials

The revised materials have finally been printed.  They are PR sets (one of each book) so not really useable: when the programme is being implemented each teacher needs a Teacher Activity Book but only the trainers require Teacher and Facilitator Training Manuals so the profile for a real print run is up and down; not the straight "same number of every book" print run that has currently been done.

Everything has been upgraded and there are a couple of new bits.  There are now modules for secondary school students and the Teacher Activity Book has been dramatically revamped especially for the upper school students (thanks to Karen and Jessica).  There is a little book called "Overview of the Programme" which needs to be read first, especially for people who don't understand how the programme is structured.  This booklet also contains the monitoring and evaluation guides developed over the years with the field people.  The story book is bigger (and hopefully better) with poetry from the original poetry book now included here.

Distribution is problematic as there is no budget apparently for this - but one way or another this material is starting to appear.  I really hope that it is useful and that we can get funding to continue and expand the programme.

Do unto others

I have just finished reading "Talk to the Hand" by Lynne Truss - a book about rudeness and the lack of manners (specifically in her own country).  There is a lot of food for thought in the book but one of the things that really resonated with me is the respect for others regardless of who they are and that this is the basis of good manners.  This is of course rights-based behaviour and one of the underpinnings of peace education.

Another element that she talks about as a reason for present-day rudeness is the absence of any feeling of accountability for your own actions.  This is a major principle in peace education as well: taking responsibility for your own actions.  Without this attitude (and the accompanying one of no blame) there is no way that problems can be solved.  Well there is - an outside authority - but that leaves those involved without any "ownership" of the solution and then, of course, the solution found is not sustainable.

One of the things that bothers me about the book is that much of what we call peace education, is actually manners.  Of course there is much more to peace education than being courteous to one another, but many of what we have labelled as the "internal" attitudes: effective listening, open and clear communication, empathy (especially empathy), inclusion (which implies respect and dignity) are all also the foundations of good manners.

Is it possible that peace education is only a bit more than courteous behaviour and good manners?

What's in a name?

For years now I have been working on what is now called the Interagency Peace Education Programme.  This is a refined and upgraded version of the earlier UNHCR Peace Education Programme.  This programme is currently at a standstill because of a lack of funding (although we are always hopeful).

For pretty much as long as the programme has existed we have had problems associated with the title (peace education).  People (including donors) want conflict resolution - with the implication that even major international conflicts can and will be solved through some sort of workshop.  It would certainly be cheaper than ensuring social and economic justice and good governance! 

I have been to many conferences where people have programmes that are called peace education but which actually provide a single outlet: e.g. drama or story writing and this is somehow supposed to develop peaceful attitudes and behaviours.

For me peace education needs to be multi-directional in the sense that it cannot focus on just on one segment of society or utilise just one approach when working with the components of the community.

Of course the programme on which I have been working (along with really great colleagues) is based on an emergency education response.  This also includes chronic crises and early reconstruction.  This last point is really important as "emergencies" should move into being "reconstruction" (preferably not a chronic crisis). 

But in any of these situations there are people; people who have suffered and who continue to suffer.  Part of what peace education does (in the programme developed by myself and my colleagues) is to help reconstruct the positive values and behaviours that (hopefully) are part and parcel of any socialisation process: communicating clearly and constructively; listening with an open mind and without bias; developing empathy with others to enable you to really see things from their point of view and so to solve problems constructively; co-operation; inclusion (very often directed specifically at girls and women and marginalised groups because of tribe, social status and health - notably HIV/AIDS); problem solving including negotiation and resolution skills.  In many ways the programme is a preventative programme not a curative one - although obviously there have to be some elements of the curative as we work in responsive modes to situations that already exist.

Perhaps the point of the programme is to break the cycle: to teach people that there are other ways of living, of solving problems or dealing with the stress of very difficult situations.  My inspiration in this work is the people with whom I have had the privilege of working: refugees who own almost nothing materially but who have wit and wisdom and who embrace the principles of peace education and whose lives have really changed.  People who forgive atrocities that I feel very sure would embitter me for life.  People who shine because they truly embody the principles of equality and dignity for all and who make a reality of these principles in their daily life.

Much of what we take for granted in peace education has been absorbed into various other programmes in emergency education and indeed into development education: "quality education" aims to transmit most of the principles embodied in peace education although it cannot offer the skills acquisition approach.  "Education for sustainable development" is the latest flavour of the month which also infers these same principles although they are included in the general phrase of "participatory approaches" and "quality".  However as long as these terms are not discussed and defined they devolve into window dressing.  I have heard (more times than I can to think about) teachers tell me that they have a participatory approach because the children answer questions.  Not exactly what the phrase is meant to mean.

Is there still a need for peace education if these other approaches incorporate the skills and values?

Of course I would claim 'yes' (but then I am biased).  But the reality is, that this programme is one of very few which actually structure a skills and values acquisition programme that is offered to all segments of a society or community and which also incorporates a training programme for teachers and facilitators. 

It is unfair and unrealistic to expect that teachers will just "know" how to teach using a very different methodology and modelling very different behaviours than they may be used to.  Too many of the more recent initiatives simply assume that teachers understand "participatory learning" in the sense of "interactive learning".  They assume that teachers have constructive classroom management skills so that when corporal punishment is banned the teachers can simply utilise these other skills.  They assume that people understand the importance of clear and open communication and interactive listening when they talk about "community participation".

The new programme is sub-titled "skills for constructive living".  You would think that would be enough and that everybody would see the need and the sense of supporting it ... wouldn't you?