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Peace education

Peace education is the process of acquiring values, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself, others, and the natural environment. There are numerous United Nations declarations and resolutions on the importance of peace. Ban Ki Moon, U.N. Secretary General, dedicated the International Day of Peace 2013 to peace education in an effort to focus minds and financing on the preeminence of peace education as the means to bring about a culture of peace. Koichiro Matsuura, the immediate past Director-General of UNESCO, has written that peace education is of "fundamental importance to the mission of UNESCO and the United Nations". Peace education as a right is increasingly emphasized by peace researchers such as Betty Reardon and Douglas Roche. There has also been a recent meshing of peace education and human rights education. Ian Harris and John Synott have described peace education as a series of "teaching encounters" that draw from people: Their desire for peace. Nonviolent alternatives for managing conflict. Skills for critical analysis of structural arrangements that produce and legitimize injustice and inequality. James Page suggests peace education be thought of as "encouraging a commitment to peace as a settled disposition and enhancing the confidence of the individual as an individual agent of peace; as informing the student on the consequence of war and social injustice; as informing the student on the value of peaceful and just social structures and working to uphold or develop such social structures; as encouraging the student to love the world and to imagine a peaceful future; and as caring for the student and encouraging the student to care for others". Often the theory or philosophy of peace education has been assumed, but not articulated. Johan Galtung suggested in 1975 that no theory for peace education existed and there was clearly an urgent need for such theory. More recently there have been attempts to establish such a theory.

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Related concepts (2)
Peace and conflict studies
Peace and conflict studies or conflict analysis and resolution is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviors as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts (including social conflicts), with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking "victory" for all parties involved in the conflict.
World peace
World peace is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would come about. Various religious and secular organizations have the stated aim of achieving world peace through addressing human rights, technology, education, engineering, medicine, or diplomacy used as an end to all forms of fighting.

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