Peace Education Programme

(developed and endorsed by UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF and INEE)

The Peace Education Programme teaches the skills and values associated with peaceful behaviours. The programme is designed to enable and encourage people to think constructively about issues, both physical and social and to develop constructive attitudes towards living together and solving problems that arise in their communities through peaceful means.

The programme allows the learners to practice these skills and helps them discover the benefits for themselves so that they psychologically 'own' the skills and behaviours. To ensure that it is a viable programme, it is essential that peace education is not a 'one-off' initiative but rather a well structured and sustained programme. None of us learns these behaviours instantly and if programmes to change or develop behaviours are to succeed, they must be both activity based and sustained through a structured and sustained programme.

The term peace education can cover many areas, from advocacy to law reform, from basic education to social justice. This peace education programme is designed to develop people's constructive and peaceful skills, values and behaviours. Ideally this complements and supplements the process of peace building, whereby communities and nations develop social and economic justice (and legal reform where necessary).

Peace Education Programme Contents:


If you are using the INEE PEP materials, the INEE Secretariat would like to hear from you, please contact: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

INEE Peace Education Materials: Historical Development

Following the Machel Study on The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children (1996), UNHCR and its field partners piloted a life skills-based Peace Education Programme (PEP), initially in the refugee camps of Kakum and Dadaab in Kenya. PEP was subsequently introduced in some UNHCR-supported programmes in Africa and elsewhere, for refugees and for other conflict-affected populations, drawing initially on a UNHCR trust fund for children. National educators were employed as trainers in several countries, and trained refugee educators as peace education teachers.

In 2001, INEE’s Steering Group agreed that UNHCR would share the PEP materials with INEE members. The UNHCR peace education materials were endorsed by key INEE members including UNESCO and UNICEF, and printed with the INEE logo.

INEE members were invited to a High-Level Design Workshop to review ways of using the materials to meet the needs of a wide-range of emergency-affected populations. The INEE materials were launched at the workshop on March 25 and 26, 2002 at UNESCO in Paris. For the original materials presented at this workshop, including a youth workshop manual, see the INEE Technical Kit. For a summary of the discussions at the workshop, please click on the link below.

Draft Report on the High Level Technical Design Workshop for the INEE Peace Education Programme (pdf) held at UNESCO Paris, 25-26 March, 2002

An independent evaluation of the PEP programme in the Kakuma and Dadaab camps was conducted in 2001 by Dr Anna Obura (formerly of UNICEF) to determine if the programme had had any positive impact on peace building and conflict prevention during the first four years of its existence The second issue was whether refugees had learned peace-building skills. For a summary of the findings, please click on the link below.

Peace Education Programme Evaluation Summary (Dadaab and Kakuma, Kenya)

From 2003-2004, there was a cooperative project between UNESCO and UNHCR (funded by the Norwegian Government), whereby the international consultant who developed the programme (Pamela Baxter) worked 50% of her time with UNESCO colleagues to prepare an edited version of the PEP materials (the 16 booklets listed above).

In recent years, these materials have served as a model for the development of peace and citizenship education programmes in post-conflict countries. UNHCR, UNESCO and others have used the PEP materials in training programmes for curriculum, teacher training and other ministry of education staff, as a contribution toward curriculum renewal in the schools and teacher training institutions.

If you have used the INEE PEP materials, the INEE Secretariat would like to hear from you, please contact: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Related Resources and Studies

The Peace Education Programme (PEP) Evaluation By Lydia Allen, Chantal LaParl-Green, Mana Miyawaki, Nelson Monroe, Siri Siripanlch, and Brandon Thompson. 2009.

This is a study conducted by a team of students at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. The results of the evaluation are based on case studies in Kenya, Ghana, Timor-Leste and Sudan. Through literature review and interviews with practitioners of the PEP, the SIPA team has developed recommendations for good practices and opportunities for future use.

Getting Ready for a Future Without War: Implementation of a Peace Education Programme with Liberian Refugees By Friederike Feuchte and Andreas Beelmann. University of Jena, Germany. 2008.

This paper examines how the community workshops of the Inter-Agency Peace Education Programme (INEE, 2005) were implemented in a refugee camp in Ghana with refugees from Liberia. Data from observations and interviews showed that participants were very active, highly appreciated the workshops and often transferred what they learned into their daily life. Reality constraints, important target groups and the role of culture for peace education are discussed to outline challenges and chances of peace education in the process of reconciliation and peace building after a civil war.

Evaluation of JRS Peace Education Program in Uganda and South Sudan By Vick Ikobwa, Sr. Roxanne Schares, and Fr. Elias Omondi. 2005.

The Peace Education Program (PEP) evaluation for JRS Uganda/South Sudan took place from October 17th to 28th, 2005 in the field with other interviews held before and after in Nairobi. The exercise focused on the PEP projects in Adjumani, Moyo, Arua Districts in Uganda and Nimule and Kajokeji, South Sudan. The primary objectives of the evaluation was to assess the impact that the program has had in the communities and schools in northern Uganda (specifically in Adjumani, Moyo and Arua districts) and southern Sudan (Kajokeji and Nimule) since the program was initiated in late 1999, and to propose possible ways forward.

Teachers Activity Book Matrix of Activities By Pamela Baxter. 2000.

The activities provided in this matrix may be used as a guideline for educators who want to teach topics related to Peace Education. Activities are designed for first to eighth grade students and topics include Similarities and Differences, Inclusion/Exclusion, Listening, Better Communication, Handling Emotions, Perceptions and Empathy, Co-operation, Assertiveness, Analysis, Problem Solving, Conflict Resolution, Negotiation, and Mediation.