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Children in Côte d’Ivoire learn about peace from UNICEF-sponsored curriculum

Children in Côte d’Ivoire learn about peace from UNICEF-sponsored curriculum

Teaching children about reconciliation in Côte d’Ivoire
Children in post-conflict southern Côte d’Ivoire are learning to substitute concepts of peace and forgiveness for hate and intolerance in a curriculum co-sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Children in post-conflict southern Côte d’Ivoire are learning to substitute concepts of peace and forgiveness for hate and intolerance in a curriculum co-sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“Through the Peace and Tolerance curriculum, we have been able to reach thousands of children who otherwise only know messages of hate and distrust. This curriculum allows us to counteract those messages in every lesson in the classroom,” UNICEF’s Youssouf Oomar said in the main city, Abidjan. “This way we’re hoping that reconciliation and peace are not just slogans on their classroom walls.”

UNICEF and its partners introduced the curriculum late last year to teach the children in a country bitterly divided by war that protection, peace and tolerance are not just words.

“What is the most important thing for a child?” teacher Florence Abo Kossia asks her class. A lively little boy volunteers the first answer: “The right to have fun.”

A failed coup attempt in 2002 against President Laurent Gbagbo led to a civil war that has left the country divided into the south, ruled by the Government, and the north, controlled by rebels.

“Because of this war in Côte d’Ivoire, we thought that if people were taking up arms, it’s because they had no sense of peace. We, as teachers, are in charge of the children and we must promote this culture of peace so they can grow up and flourish,” Ms. Abo Kossia said.

“They are still little. But they are the citizens of tomorrow and maybe even the [future] president of the republic is in my class right now. If the president doesn’t know about peace, how can he run his country?”