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Importance of Peace Education for Building Social Cohesion

July 3rd, 2019: PAIMAN Alumni Trust organized an orientation session on “Importance of Peace Education” on 3rd July, 2019 at Pearl Continental Peshawar under its initiative, “Peace Education and Awareness Raising Regarding Importance of Tolerance, Human Rights Protection, Inter-faith and Inter-communal Understanding in Pakistan”. The overall aim of the event was to hold a discourse around the importance of peace education as well inclusion of concepts related to tolerance, pluralism, interfaith/intra-faith harmony, human rights and Islam and concept of Peaceful communities in the curriculum of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For this purpose PAIMAN engaged selected members of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, officials of education department, media, civil society, Academicians, management of private schools and madrassa for this session. The participants showed a strong desire that Peace Education must be a part of our curriculum.

Mossarat Qadeem, PAIMAN’s Executive Director in her introductory remarks said, “in our environment inclusive  peace education is necessarily a long-term process, not a short-term intervention. PAIMAN believes that peace education allows opportunities for children to put peace-making into practice, both in the educational setting and in the wider community. Peace education can help promote participation, cooperation, problem-solving and respect for differences; she underlined the need for integrating an understanding of peace, human rights, and social justice throughout the curriculum whenever possible.

Hailing from different professional backgrounds, the participants unanimously resolved to work for making Peace Education a part of the curriculum at every level of education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Mr. Arshad Khan Secretary Elementary and Secondary Education Peshawar stressed that including peace education in  the curriculum will develop acceptance for diversity and respect for all communities, religions and sects among the students although it requires time and commitment.

Ms Bushra Hyder, Head of Qadeems Lumiere, a pioneer in introducing Peace Curriculum in her school, shared her experience that how students start thinking positively once expose to aspects of human rights, peace pluralism, tolerance and peaceful co-existence within the context of Islam and the role that teachers and parents can play in promoting tolerance and love for diversity in children.