USIP to Attend World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates

Next week (April 23-25), representatives from the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) will attend the 12th annual World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, a major international gathering of peacebuilding leaders.

The program will feature Nobel peace laureates from around the world as well as representatives from governments, civil society organizations, the business and philanthropic communities, and from Chicago public schools. Chicago is the first north American city to host this annual event, and USIP board member Kerry Kennedy is among the host committee chairs. This year’s summit, entitled “Speak Up, Speak Out for Freedom and Rights,” will place special attention on the power of young people and the importance of educating and engaging the next generation of peacebuilding leaders.

The U.S. Institute of Peace––our country’s global conflict management center––will have two staff members in attendance at the summit to highlight USIP’s work in preventing, mitigating and resolving international conflicts without violence. The Institute is engaged in training and empowering peacebuilders in conflict zones around the world. A core element of USIP’s mandate focuses on public education, which has recently been expanded through new programs and resources for young people and educators in the Global Peacebuilding Center.

USIP’s Peacebuilding Toolkit for Educators is supporting the work of educators in bringing peacebuilding into the classroom. This resource will be promoted among attendees at the Chicago summit, and is also available for download at www.buildingpeace.org/toolkit. With the summit in mind, USIP will also feature an “Ask an Expert” opportunity online, where questions can be submitted to senior program officer and curriculum development expert Alison Milofsky about using the toolkit and other materials to engage high school students on international peacebuilding themes.

The Global Peacebuilding Center also offers other online activities for young people and educators, including a Famous Peacebuilders Quiz that highlights a number of Nobel peace laureates as part of a Virtual Passport experience for web users.

USIP’s engagement of students and teachers across the U.S. also takes place through its annual National Peace Essay Contest, which is a long-running program of the Acadamy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding.

Over the three-day program of the World Summit next week, moderated discussions with the Nobel laureates will cover a range of key themes in peacebuilding and human rights, and these sessions will be webcast to a broad public audience around the U.S. and overseas. The Nobel Laureates will also visit Chicago public schools, where the Robert F. Kennedy Center’s Speak Truth to Power Curriculum is being used to share the Laureates’ experiences with young people. USIP will be posting updates and images from the event in Chicago at www.usip.org.