Draft Culture of Peace Programme in Mozambique 61-64

PROJECT PROFILE 9.0

The heart of the Programme and the characteristic which makes it unique is the concept of the "peace-promoter". Peace-promoters will be trained and deployed in most of the projects of the Culture of Peace Programme in Mozambique. They will come from the ranks of the community organizers of rural women, trainers of demobilized soldiers, community school teachers, youth and cultural animators, community radio and other peace journalists, development workers, women parliamentarians, and army or police officers and traditional leaders who have taken part in training courses of the Programme.

The peace-promoter should represent and symbolize for people on a local community level the global culture of peace programme and capacities of the United Nations. Peace-promoters thus wear two hats: one is their work at the community level which may be as a teacher, community organizer or development worker; the other is their work in conflict resolution and their communication linkages in the name of the United Nations.

A constant dialogue between the Culture of Peace Programme and its various peace-promoters is essential for the dynamic growth and development of the Programme. The contents of the programme cannot be invented in advance or imposed from outside. Instead, they must be derived through an organic process which grows out of the experience of peace-making at the grass-roots level. This dialogue can only take place through a constant interplay of communication between the center of the programme and its peace-promoters in the field and among the peace-promoters themselves.

In order to achieve such a constant flow of information despite the lack of telephones or even electricity in many parts of the country, peace-promoters should be "armed" with the most sophisticated instruments of peace - those of modern high-tech communication.

The peace-promoter will be encouraged to make this communication system available for the use of the community, for example, as a teaching tool for children in the community school. Since the system is high-tech, making use of computer technology, it enables the peace-promoter to function as an educator, both in terms of the technology of information and in terms of access to particular distant information.

A system of simple but high-technology communication will be developed and deployed among the peace-promoters of the Programme. Preliminary plans call for this to consist of a battery-powered personal computer and short-wave radio with sufficient range that its signal can be reliably received and translated into computer language by a central office of the Programme.

Peace-promoters will receive special training in the use and maintenance of this equipment. In order to ensure long-term maintenance, an additional 50% of the initial equipment costs are included in the budget.

The peace-promoter will be encouraged to make available use of the communication system to the community as a whole. In this way it should come to be seen as community property, just as the Culture of Peace Programme itself should be seen as belonging to the people. It should come to represent the direct contact of the local community with the global Culture of Peace Programme and the United Nations system.

Summary of Activities:

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