On the 29-30 April 2019, the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) will organize and host an experience sharing workshop for the "Youth Empowerment for Peace and Resilience Building and Prevention of Violent Extremism in African Countries through Teacher Development" project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The project builds upon lessons learned from the “Teacher Training and Development for Peace Building’’ projects implemented in the Horn of Africa in 2017 and in the Sahel region in 2018, with the support of the Government of Japan. More than 6,500 teacher educators and teachers have been trained on transformative pedagogy for peacebuilding. This project will focus on sharing and scaling up good practices in the target countries.

The project targets teachers in 17 countries in Africa, namely Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and their cross-border areas. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Union (AU) Commission's Human Resources and Science and Technology Department and Peace and Security Department along with the UNICEF Liaison Office to the AU are strategic partners in the project.

In addition to the strategic project partners, UNICEF Ethiopia, UNDP Regional Office in Ethiopia, One African Child and Arigatou International will be in attendance at the workshop along with UNESCO Headquarters and Offices, namely the Multisectoral Regional Office in Dakar, Regional Office for Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Liaison Office in Addis Ababa, Cluster Office in Rabat, Multisectoral Regional Office in Abuja, and Country Offices in Juba and Uganda.

The one-year project, supported by the Government of Japan, aims to instil peace, build resilience and prevent violent extremism though education (PVE-E) for youth through teacher development, so as to create an opportunity for youth to embrace peace values while preventing violent extremism though education and teacher development. Specifically, the meeting will aim to:

• Share experiences, lessons learned and challenges of the countries and agencies on peace building and PVE-E.
• Discuss and plan on how to mainstream peace, resilience building and PVE-E at colleges of teacher education and the higher education level.
• Discuss potential areas of intervention and develop project action for peace and resilience building and the prevention of violent extremism in African countries through teacher development.
• Create synergy and collaboration among UNESCO, UNICEF and government initiatives on peacebuilding and PVE-E.
• Develop and strengthen the framework and mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of project activities in countries.
For additional information about the project:
Ms. Eyerusalem Azmeraw, Project Officer, UNESCO IICBA, a.eyerusalem@unesco.org
For media relations:
Ms. Beth Roseman, Consultant, UNESCO IICBA, b.roseman@unesco.org

Press Release in pdf

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