One question pervades our training processes: How and from what perspectives should we prepare new generations of teachers for peace, memory, and human rights? This is a constant concern in the pedagogical scenarios that constitute the micro-politics of the Colombian context.
In Colombia, especially in our university, we have a significant archive of documents related to an anticipated political transition. In addition, there is a repertoire of established and emerging practices, a growing struggle for remembrance, the search for truth, justice, reparation and non-recurrence, and the establishment of an education for peace and human rights with ethical and political significance. The Ministry of Education has adopted policies, such as the introduction of the Peace Curriculum and the Law on the Compulsory Teaching of History, as strategies for official memory.
In addition, we include the recommendations of the Law on Victims and Land Restitution, which makes it possible to create and strengthen a framework for peace education that includes the reconstruction of recent history, human rights, a pedagogy of memory and testimonies of the conflict. At the same time, we highlight the mission of the Committee for Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, whose purpose is “… to seek the truth about what happened during the internal armed conflict, in order to contribute to the clarification of the violations already committed, but also to offer society a comprehensive explanation of its complexity, providing a testimony that includes all voices.”
The Committee also works to recognize the right of victims to know the truth and encourages individuals and groups directly or indirectly involved in the conflict to voluntarily acknowledge their responsibility. It also promotes peaceful coexistence in affected communities with the overall goal of preventing the recurrence of violence.
Thus, the post-agreement process[1] also requires us to question ourselves about the principles that underpin our pedagogical practices, and especially the components that shape the construction of identities, those that have been damaged by the armed conflict. Therefore, what is the ethical sense that could redirect a violent society towards a peaceful one? How can we achieve the effectiveness of a democratic project that goes beyond the nominal and becomes a practical action of respect for human rights?
In this regard, the State University System (SUE, by its original acronym), NGOs, and social organizations have emphasized the construction of collective identities of political agents in transition – from war to peace – which involves making memories, reconstructing histories, recognizing sensibilities, recovering social fabrics, ordering experiences, mapping conflicts, and giving voice to the pain caused by war. These challenges in a post-conflict context generate friction between different components, including scenarios, individuals, practices, and pedagogical perspectives. This situation inevitably calls for analytical readings of the understandings, intentions, categories, methodologies, and knowledge that underlie peace education.
In fact, when we discuss the emergence of these voices, the production of discourses and a deployment of lessons, we want to make available our Center for Education for Peace, Memory and Human Rights (CEPAZ, by its original acronym), an institutional scenario whose functions are, among others, to contribute to the theoretical and methodological bases from a series of interdisciplinary analyses that allow trainee and in-service teachers pedagogical and didactic approaches relevant and consistent with social, cultural and political needs […]. From this perspective, we assume that transitional or post-conflict processes present a series of theoretical, ethical, and practical challenges. They are sui generis political situations that question many social actors, recognize and value others, question the institutions and social mechanisms at work, and question society as a whole for the existence of a construct of peace that assumes it in a literal, prescriptive, ahistorical, and decontextualized way. Therefore, from the UPN we call to think about an education of and for peace, based on collective and symbolic memories that give relevance to the contexts located, giving discourses a testimonial value of experience with the specific purpose of not repeating but transforming. This means breaking pedagogical traditions and political habits by understanding that peace is a process, a project, a political decision, an ethical choice, a right and a reality. It is therefore life, memory, justice, history, and horizon.
Postscript: In order to contribute more effectively to the defense of human rights and the building of peace, public universities must promote and protect human rights and ensure that they are not stigmatized, threatened, or attacked.
[1] We consider this process with the signing of the Agreement for the Definitive End to the Conflict on November 24, 2016, between the Government of Juan Manuel Santos (President of Colombia 2010-2018) and the FARC-EP guerrillas. Reference is made to the draft agreement included in the book The Final Agreement for the Termination of the Conflict and the Building of a Stable and Lasting Peace (Government of Colombia & FARC-EP), Ediciones desde abajo.
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