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Past Events Celebrating The Peace Foundation’s 41st Anniversary On May 23 and 24, The Peace Foundation celebrated its 41st birthday. The dates marked more than four decades of peacebuilding initiatives. The organization celebrated this anniversary both in Auckland and Wellington, where several peace scholars and peace education supporters presentations gave speeches on the challenges to peace in New Zealand, as well as the Foundation's achievements and prospects for the future of peacebuilding and disarmament in New Zealand and the world. The Peace Foundation team had the great honour to present its work to parliamentarians and other Wellington supporters of peace education in the Beehive. The Peace Foundation team in the Beehive with Chester Borrows, Deputy Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament. Supporters and performers at the Auckland 41st birthday celebration. Pink Shirt Day 2016: Speaking up against bullying In support of Pink Shirt Day Aotearoa 2016, part of The Peace Foundation team got their pink t-shirts on and headed down to BaristaCats Café in central Auckland: because who are better anti-bullying ambassadors than cats? International Cultural Festival The Peace Foundation participated in the Auckland International Cultural Festival with loads of peaceful messages to spread. Among other activities, the Foundation’s stand invited festival visitors to contribute with their peace drawings on its peace mural, take a seat and make new friendships, as well as pin their hometown on the Global Peace Supporters’ map. 10 MediationWORKS 2016 WINTER edition
Don’t Underestimate Child and Youth Agency in Peacebuilding by Sandra Segall (Communications Coordinator) International School courtyard in Antioquía, Colombia. Photo: Charlotte Kesl / Flickr Creative Commons 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 concluded that the integration of children in peacebuilding projects contributed to lowering the incidence of violence and discrimination in the communities. These programmes helped promote peaceful cohabitation and augmented the support given to vulnerable groups. The results of the report led the organizations to pinpoint three recommendations for a more youth oriented peacebuilding approach: “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 isn’t a new addition to the peacemaking arena. In Colombia, youth initiatives have been an integral part of the peacebuilding landscape for the last 20 years. In 1996, the Children for Peace Movement was founded and got more than 2.7 million children to vote for peace, many of them from areas heavily affected by the ongoing armed conflict. The movement was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 and was “the first largescale initiative in Colombia promoting children as subjects with rights and not only objects of protection.” Since then, impressive steps have been taken to include children in decision-making processes. Last year, Colombia introduced a new law which aims to incorporate peace as a school subject nationwide. Finally, children have great potential as peacebuilders both in violent conflict and ‘peaceful’ contexts because their peace activities diminish the occurrence of all forms of violence in communities. Q&A - Nadeem Ghazi - Peace Educator in Pakistan by Sandra Segall (Communications Coordinator) What are the main obstacles to peace education in Pakistan? Pakistan is facing tremendous challenges in the education sector, with 25 million children not attending schools at all. Official records show that this figure has remained mostly unchanged since 2005. There’s also hate speech and references to violence in the school curriculum, the government is trying to remove those words and parts from the school books. Peace education is a very new concept in Pakistan, we have to be careful that in ensuring that it’s integrated with Islamic and Pakistani culture, so that people receive a clear message about peace education, rather than interpreting it as a threat of the Western agenda. Given that education itself is threatened by violent conflict in Pakistan, what role could children and schools play as drivers of peace? Nadeem Ghazi works with several peace education and learning projects in Pakistan. We need to work on mindsets, as for more than two decades, our people have been in war and I believe that we need to bring basic education to every child. Peace education is the only solution to unlearn all violence, hate speech and extremism and instead teach children skills for how to be kind, caring and live well together. Education is the only hope for Pakistan. The country has a history of suffering from violence, extremism and especially youth has been targeted. One way to help break the cycle of violence is to actively teach young people how to live together peacefully. Young people are especially at risk from conflict and extremist influences, but they also have great capacity to learn how to practice peace. The best way to teach them this is through peace education programs that integrate knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to prevent violence and resolve conflict peacefully with everyday lessons taught to children and youth in schools and communities. 2016 WINTER edition MediationWORKS 11
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