reed from the pressures from East and West that had fuelled their violent conflicts during the Cold War, many countries have turned to the United Nations for assistance in the process of reconciliation and peace building. Since UNESCO's Culture of Peace Programme was conceived as a contribution to this effort, the Twenty seventh General Conference called for activities to promote a culture of peace that 'help to consolidate peace and democracy in the Member States involved in a process of national reconciliation and reconstruction'.
The first national programmes have been established in El Salvador, Mozambique and Burundi. These programmes are described here in some detail, along with steps being taken towards similar programmes in Honduras, Nicaragua and Somalia. Consideration is also given to the challenge of funding national programmes.
National programmes put the basic concepts of a culture of peace into action on a national scale. These basic concepts, as pointed out earlier, include:

the non violent management of conflicts, based on traditional methods;

the development of democratic process and respect of political and human rights for everyone;

the participation and co operation in the development process of all parties to the conflict, to ensure that development becomes sustainable, endogenous and equitable.

quiring reconciliation following conflict. This approach reflects the basic finding in social psychology that the most effective method of resolving conflict between two groups is to promote their co operation toward a goal of mutual benefit to the two parties concerned.
Workers in the various development projects are trained to facilitate the process of participation, dialogue and co operation using both the traditional and universal principles and methods of conflict management. In this way, they come to function as peace promoters' assuring that the parties from all sides of the conflict continue to participate and benefit from the development process.
Since a basic premise of the Programme is that a culture of peace cannot be imposed, the training of peace promoters is based upon the study and use of traditional practices of conflict management. For example, as will be described, these include the traditions of peace promoters in Central America, traditions such as the Milando in Mozambique, and the Bashingantahe in Burundi.
At the same time training also stress universal values such as those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other related United Nations documents. In this way a culture of peace works to fulfil a basic objective of linking the local and global.
Engaging conflicting parties in the development process is not an easy task, which makes the work of the peace promoters both difficult and essential to the success of a national programme. For this reason, an essential aspect of these programmes is the development of a network and support system for peace promoters which ensures their regular exchange of information, periodic up dates of training and mutual support and encouragement.
The training and networking of peace promoters in principle may include not only workers in the development projects of the UNESCO Programme, but development workers, teachers, and other community workers from other agencies as well.

National Culture of Peace Programmes provide a setting in which all sides of a conflict sit around the same table to design and implement human development projects from which all will benefit.

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Workers in the various development projects function as 'peace promoters' assuring that the parties from all sides of the conflict continue to participate and benefit from the development process. As this is a difficult task, they need specialized training and the backing of a network and support system.

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