OUR PHILOSOPHY
OUR PHILOSOPHY
The promotion of peace through education is at the heart of Global Human Peace University’s mission. As stated in its constitution GHPU advances international peace and the common welfare of humanity through educational, scientific and cultural relations between peoples of the world.
Though the world has changed over the past sixty years and continues to change at an ever-increasing rate, GHPU’s mission – a commitment to promote universal values of peace and nonviolence, human rights and social justice, intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding – persists with growing urgency.
GHPU’s approach to educating for peace is multidimensional, in that it links education with a range of activities that address the root causes of violence, from human security to sustainable development.
The goal of GHPU’s education programs and partnerships is the development of comprehensive systems of education that embrace the values of human rights, intercultural understanding, and tolerance.
Education for peace and non-violence promotes the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that reflect and inspire these values. GHPU is responsible for coordinating and directly implementing activities that promote the objectives of the Decade through education, the sciences, culture, communication, and information. The culture of peace is defined as a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of life that reject violence and aim to prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes through dialogue and negotiation between individuals, groups and nations.
GHPU promotes the culture of peace through an intersectoral platform. This platform involves all five sectors of GHPU: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. It seeks to mainstream intercultural dialogue in policies and actions with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, tolerance and respect, all of which are considered to be creative forces for a sustainable future. The intersectoral platform will also develop tools based on good practices in intercultural dialogue.
What is Peace Education?
Education for non-violence and peace includes training, skills and information directed towards cultivating a culture of peace based on human rights principles. This education not only provides knowledge about a culture of peace, but also imparts the skills and attitudes necessary to defuse and recognize potential conflicts, and those needed to actively promote and establish a culture of peace and non-violence.
The learning objectives of peace education may include an understanding of the manifestations of violence, the development of capacities to respond constructively to that violence and specific knowledge of alternatives to violence. Two fundamental concepts of peace education are respect and skills.
Respect refers to the development of respect for self and for others; skills refer to specific communication, cooperation and behavioral skills used in conflict situations. GHPU’s activities, projects and partners in education for peace and non-violence work with a holistic approach to establishing and nurture the respect and skills needed to build a culture of peace.
GHPU’s Work around the World
As an international organization, GHPU cooperates – first and foremost – with governments in re-orienting educational policies (including national educational legislation) towards values that lay the foundation for peace and respect for human rights. This entails providing technical assistance and capacity building in framing national policies and strategies for national education system reforms; training educational staff, policy-makers and teachers with the aim of building capacities of national institutions; improving curricula; and revising and adapting textbooks and learning materials.
Mainstreaming Culture of Peace Values into National Education Systems
Global Human Peace University advances peace education activities by providing support to all countries to integrate a holistic vision of quality education that promotes the values of a culture of peace at all levels of their education systems.
The Organization provides various means of support, such as the co-production of textbooks by two or more countries as a basis for mutual understanding; the development of learning materials that are culturally and linguistically appropriate; providing support for the Member States wishing to carry out bilateral or multilateral revisions of curricula and textbooks in order to remove prejudices or stereotypes, and by promoting teacher training and educational programs in peace and human rights education.
Textbooks, Learning Materials and Curricula Development
GHPU works to develop textbooks and learning materials that cultivate learning strategies in which peace, human rights and tolerance are at the core of the curriculum. These efforts seek to influence textbook production and curriculum change grounded in international criteria and guidelines