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United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
As the lead agency for children in the UN system, UNICEF promotes the long-term well-being of the child, including personal and emotional security, social and cognitive development and health and nutritional needs. Increasingly this has come to involve the empowerment of women and children through development of knowledge and skills, the promotion of target group organization and participation in decision making and the strengthening of co-operation within civil society.
As it is women and children who are most vulnerable to the suffering and destruction of war, UNICEF programmes include many activities which promote peace. For example, UNICEF's Education for Development Programme promotes solidarity, not only with people from other lands, but also with those who have formerly been enemies. It includes 'education for peace' projects which promote tolerance among students in countries strained by rising xenophobia, provide support for children traumatized by war, and help to build bridges between young people of diverse communities. The projects offer training in conflict resolution techniques - teaching young people not only that peace is possible, but how to make it happen.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, children share their hopes for peace on Colourful Wall, a one hour radio programme broadcast twice each weekday in Sarajevo. In Sri Lanka, where children have played a prominent role in the conflicts, Education for Conflict Resolution offers children alternatives to violence, by training educators to identify values of peace and tolerance and develop in their students the ability to empathize, to cooperate and to think critically.
In the Lebanon, a group of teenagers at Volunteer Development Camps have been planting cedar trees in areas of their country damaged by war. The camps have
united young people from different backgrounds - and religions, combining useful environmental restoration with a sense of pride and responsibility. Planting the trees not only serves to preserve the symbol of their country, but gives the young people a sense of doing something positive and a feeling that they have a say in their future. As one Education for Peace trainer said, the camp gives 'a new set of goals, a common way of life ... to erase the ugly memories of war'.
Other UNICEF peace education projects include Kukatonon Children's Peace Theatre in Liberia and the Circo da Paz in Mozambique.
Department of Women
'Women's definitions of security involve a preference for constructive rather than destructive power. This entails a conception in which power is used for the benefit of all in order to achieve common goals. This depends upon a bottom up rather than a top down understanding of power.' These are among the conclusions of a meeting of experts convened in December 1994 by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
The meeting made a number of recommendations that would make women's capacities for peace-building more available to the UN system. It called for a woman Secretary-General and equal numbers of male and female candidates for UN posts, especially in those dealing with peace-keeping and peace building activities. Use of traditional gender sensitive practices for UN peace-keeping, training in gender sensitivity for personnel working in peace and security activities, and the establishment of a world-wide women's television channel and radio band which could function as part of an early warning system to prevent violence were among the other suggestions.
In defining security women have a preference for constructive rather than destructive power, in which power is used for the benefit of all in order to achieve common goals.