PROMOTING A CULTURE OF PEACE.

• Author: Salas, Dame Laurie
• Position: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Dame Laurie Salas outlines the UNESCO-sponsored efforts to encourage a peaceful and non-violent world for children.

Addressing a meeting to mark United Nations Day on 25 October last year, Major-General Piers Reid noted that 2000 had been designated the UN Year for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence. He focused on peacekeeping as one aspect of the work done by the United Nations in helping to create a just, legal and more equal world in which peace can flourish. Contributing peacekeepers reminds countries of the rules and habits for peace, he said; thus such contributions help form a national and international style, or if you like, a culture. Therefore the decision to call this the Year of the Culture of Peace is most apposite.

The Year of the Culture of Peace has come and gone, but implicit in its objectives is the continuation of the search to create at all levels of society a positive attitude towards resolving conflict by non-violent means.

We are now entering into the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non Violence for Children of the World 2001-2010. The Culture of Peace concept was launched by UNESCO at an international congress held in Yamousouka (Cote d'lvoire): according to Francoise Riviere of UNESCO, the concept embraces `a question of values, attitudes, individual and collective behaviour that give rise to and incarnate the spirit of peace'.

UNESCO's strategy for the initial years of the decade is three-pronged:

* educating for a culture of peace. The objective is to develop a complete system of education and training for peace, human rights and democracy, tolerance, nonviolence and international understanding for all population groups and all levels of education -- with priority being given to primary and secondary grades. Development and distribution of materials is one aspect, but there is also a big emphasis on sensitising and training teachers, the real channels for transmitting information and ideas

* furthering the promotion of cultural pluralism and multicultural dialogue. Emphasis will be given to research on cultural interaction in particularly relevant centres, such as multicultural cities. Programmes such as `Intercultural Dialogue in Everyday Life' will encourage co-operation between non-government organisations and associations of young people from various ethnic backgrounds. Efforts will be made to revise history teaching to highlight convergence between cultures in areas such as the Balkans and Latin America.

* encouraging studies in the sources and forms of violence, and promotion of the means and mechanisms...