Talking peace in a war-ridden country

Schoolchildren in Colombia’s capital Bogotá are talking about what it takes to create peace and safety in their country, after more than fifty years of war. Their teaching material has travelled all the way from the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

“Who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year?” The schoolchildren sitting on the floor of Colombia’s National Museum know the answer. It was their own president. But when the museum educator asks them why he won the prize, they are at a loss. For a moment, the gallery that houses the Peace Prize Exhibition Hope over Fear falls completely silent. The children don’t know what to say. Around them, photographs of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos hang side by side with those of the civil war’s victims, FARC guerrillas and mine clearance experts. These are the pictures that renowned Danish photographer Mads Nissen took in the weeks after the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to Colombia’s president in October last year. The exhibition now on show in the Colombian capital is identical to the one on display at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. Its transfer to Bogotá is the product of a collaboration between the Nobel Peace Center and the National Museum of Colombia, with financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is not just the exhibition that has travelled to the country to which the Peace Prize was awarded. The educational programme that the Nobel Peace Center created for visiting Norwegian schoolchildren has also crossed the Atlantic. Educators at the National Museum of Colombia are now using the same teaching materials in connection with school trips to the institution.

-A whole new departure

“This exhibition gives us an opportunity to talk about the peace process in a completely new way. Before, we only spoke about the conflict’s history – now we are talking to the children about the victims, the cocaine trade and the guerrillas. That is a whole new departure for us,” says museum educator Maria Monica Fuentes Leal.

The National Museum of Colombia is primarily an art gallery, whose purpose is to present Colombia’s cultural heritage and history. For its staff, discussing the country’s president and ongoing political conflict with visitors has been a real challenge. “But the way the Nobel Peace Center has designed the educational programme allows us to talk about the President without taking sides politically,” says Ms Fuentes Leal.

The Nobel Peace Center’s education director Toril Rokseth explains that when her teaching staff talk about President Santos with schoolchildren, they talk about the role he has played in the peace negotiations, and ask them what qualities they think he needs to have for there to be lasting peace in Colombia.

Tools for conflict resolution

“Whether we are children or adults, we have all experienced conflicts of one kind or another,” she continues. “Sometimes we can resolve them, and sometimes we can’t. We want to make pupils aware that they possess important conflict-solving skills, and point out that the same mechanisms are responsible for escalating a conflict between two pupils in a class, as between opposing groups in a country. In addition, we introduce new tools for resolving conflicts, and practise using them. We believe that children, no matter where they come from, can benefit from learning about conflict resolution. And if we succeed in teaching them some techniques, we give them a sense that they themselves can help to create a more peaceful world.”

“How old do you think she is?” The museum educator points to a photo of a girl wearing school uniform. “As old as us,” reply the girls sitting on the floor. The girl in the picture is walking along a mountain path in the province of Antioquia. She may not be able to go to school every day, the children believe. It may be too dangerous.

Hope over Fear includes several photos of children: a two-year-old lying asleep on her bed in a FARC guerrilla camp, and a group of young girls in one of Buenaventura’s slum areas. “What will happen to these children if the peace process does not succeed?” asks the museum educator. Again, there is silence from the floor. The children know the answer to that question is grim indeed.