Even though humanity puts effort into bringing peace and establishing a global organization hoping it balances the power of the world, the wars keep on, and even worse, new wars broke out in recent years. While the wars are on longer, the human rights in those countries are trampled longer. This includes the right to be educated. Because of the situation, Young generations in the warring countries can’t be educated enough to become grownup civil citizens.
Education is what *HWPL values in achieving and settling world peace. While the organization approaches different countries using different and localized methods to bring peace, education is one of its key peacebuilding projects. The organization teaches the unprivileged youths who didn’t have a chance to be educated to help them become responsible adults. They also teach the spirit of peace through textbooks in the schools that signed the MOUs, which promised to teach HWPL’s peace education. This is for bringing and settling peace to the communities through education. Future generations will be able to practice bringing peace to their communities by remembering what they learned in school.
* HWPL (Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light): It is a global peace NGO that was established by a veteran, Chairman Lee Man Hee. He survived the Korean War as a student soldier who fought on the frontline. Experiencing the cruelty of the war, he decided to protect the youths from being soldiers and sacrificed on the battlefield.
On 16th Mar. 2024, HWPL Paris Branch held a human rights conference at the Paris Anima Center under “The Right of Young People to Education during Wartime.” Around 120 people from various fields attended the event, including the deputy mayor of the 20th district of Paris, the city councilor of Villejouf and Montreuil, and the second councilor of the UNESCO Togo delegation.
According to a 2019 report by the UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency), 63% of refugee children and young people have completed primary education, 24% have completed secondary education, and only about 3% have access to higher education. Also, civil war and terrorism in African region made many girls get jobs instead of attending educational institutions.
Seeing this circumstances, the HWPL Paris Branch held the conference at the Paris Anim Center to promote awareness of the rights of young people during wartime and encourage the participation of citizens.
The conference began with congratulatory speeches from the deputy mayor of the 20th district of Paris and two city council members. Salima Yenbu, a European Parliament member gave congratulatory remarks through video.
Diana, a Ukrainian youth studying abroad in Czech Republic, shared her testimony and encouraged the participants considering the current circumstances of young people who can’t receive an education due to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
Three keynote speakers gave speeches about youth education during wartime. Benjamin Allahamne Minda, a law lecturer, spoke about the ‘Legal Measure to Protect the Right of Education.’ Aminata N’diaye, head of the So Park organization, spoke about the ‘Various Duties of a State to Guarantee the Right of Education.’ Lastly, Rouguiatou N’N’diaye, head of the organization Education for All, spoke about ‘Good Practices for Providing Education to Young People Who Experience War.’
The deputy mayor of Paris’s 20th district shared his thoughts after the event, “I liked the overall content of the conference and hope to cooperate with HWPL.” Guillaume Du Souich, a city councilor of Villejuif, also expressed his support, saying, “I have a strong desire to contribute to peace through art, but I think it would be good to work with an organization that has the power to gather citizens like HWPL.”
Since the participants had a strong interest and support for the conference, the HWPL Paris Branch plans to hold human rights conferences and peace exhibitions regularly to spread a culture of peace in their region.
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