Unesco’s peace studies institute named after Gandhi
In an apt tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) will inaugurate its Category I institute on peace studies, named after the apostle of peace, in New Delhi this Gandhi Jayanti.
The Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) will be run from a temporary premise till it gets its own land to be allotted by the Centre later, Armoogum Parsuramen, Unesco’s representative to India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, told Deccan Herald here.
The MGIEP is being set up with major investments from Unesco. The global body aims to make it a hub for peace studies in the Asia-Pacific region. “The institute will contribute to the achievement of the goals of the Dakar Framework for Action for Education for All and the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DSED), 2005-14, for which Unesco is the designated the lead agency,” Parsuramen said.
The MGIEP will contribute to the conceptualisation, design and formulation of Unesco’s programmes, objectives and strategies, including regional and sub-regional strategies in education for a culture of peace and sustainable development.
The institute will promote evidence-based research and analysis of education for peace and sustainable development to establish a regional pool of individual and institutional expertise.
Parsuramen said Unesco would provide professional and technical support for the regular programmes and activities of the institute and encourage Unesco National Commissions of countries in the Asia-Pacific region to send trainees, experts and researchers in the relevant fields.
At the initial state, Unesco’s Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok will provide the MGIEP with assistance to conceptualise and develop a strategic programme of activities on the basis of a more detailed assessment of field-based needs in order to define the outcome and results of the proposed programmes.
