UNESCO launches new online course to help educators teach about histories of violence

Education about the Holocaust and violent pasts is part of UNESCO's work in promoting Global citizenship education (GCED), which aims to support learners of all ages to become ethical, empathetic and respectful human beings who can adapt to the world rapidly moving forward, even amidst its most complex challenges and threats.

The overall framework for GCED is the UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace and Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development, that seeks to build more peaceful, just, and sustainable societies through education.

UNESCO works with countries and partners to develop programmes that foster understanding of the causes and consequences of the Holocaust, violent pasts and how genocides happen, to encourage a constructive engagement in today's societies. It provides guidance and tools to support textbook and curriculum revision, develop and revise policies, promote appropriate and relevant pedagogies, and enhance cooperation between formal and non-formal sectors of education, including with museums and memorials. UNESCO also creates Chairs in universities to sustain research and education about the history and the prevention of extreme forms of violence.

The Organization's work on the legacies of violence spans across its areas of expertise. Several memorial sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, starting with the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1979, and continued more recently with the inscription of three memorial sites of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, as well as three historical sites of the crimes committed by the Khmer rouge regime in Cambodia. This work is complimented by UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme that recognizes significant documentary heritage and includes collections of historical records that bear witness to past crimes.