The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) is honored to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Office of the Ombudsman and Ministry of Education of El Salvador, covering the themes of education and prevention. The MOU was officially signed as part of the opening day of the VIII Focal Points Meeting of the Latin American Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, which took place on October 16 and 17 in New York City. The agreement was signed by Raquel Caballero de Guevara, the Ombudsperson of El Salvador, Dr. Carlos Canjura, the Salvadoran Minister of Education, and Dr. Tibi Galis, Executive Director of AIPR.
Since July of 2015, AIPR has developed a project entitled “Education, Human Rights, and Prevention” in collaboration with the Office of the Ombudsman of El Salvador (PDDH), which is a Focal Point institution of the Latin American Network. The project is working to design an education initiative that will contribute to reinforcing the democratic values and a culture of peace, taking into account the historical and social realities of the country.
Following two preliminary meetings and the design of an initial work proposal, APIR and the PDDH established a cooperative framework with the Ministry of Education, which, from the beginning of 2017, has been carrying out a series of efforts to promote a culture of peace in the country. These efforts have been implemented in the spirit of commemoration for the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Peace Agreement.
The signing of this MOU consolidates this relationship and establishes the parameters for collaboration between the three institutions in relation to the development and future implementation of the project throughout 2018. AIPR’s Director of Educational Policy, Dr. Clara Ramírez Barat, remarked on her satisfaction with the signing of the agreement, saying:
After more than a year of work in El Salvador with our partners in the PDDH and a group of diverse local actors, the possibility of incorporating the Ministry of Education into this initiative, as well as contributing to the reinforcing the work that, from the same institution, is being developed around prevention and a culture of peace. This is, for us, a very important incentive to continue the consolidation of this work.
Currently, a team of local experts is at work on the creation of a pedagogical tool that will contribute to reinforcing initiatives for citizenship education as well as the promotion of a culture of peace in scholastic settings in El Salvador. Once this material has been finalized, a series of training workshops will be held with teachers and other actors in the education sector, as well as the initiation of a training module to be held on a permanent basis.