September 24, 2007: North Caucasus children learn about peace and tolerance
By John Varoli Tolerance, peace and living in a multi-ethnic society were the main topics of five summer camps that UNICEF, assisted and supported by local authorities, held in four Russia’s North Caucasian republics – Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Over 500 children took part in the program this year. UNICEF’s camp in Dagestan, held, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, near the 5000-year-old city of Derbent, was the last of the five camps. Divided into groups that cut across ethnic lines, 150 children at this camp learnt to work together as a team, based not on ethnic identity, but a common goal of forging a future of tolerance and peace. By sharing and celebrating their different cultures, the children better understand the key message of the camp. In the evenings, each national team presented their best music and dance traditions. It not only helped the children to accept and understand those who were different but also to reveal how much the people of the North Caucasus region have in common. Making peace though breaking stereotypes Since the early 1990s each republic in Russia’s North Caucasus region has been touched by ethnic and military conflicts. Hostilities between two small nations in the region, the Ossetians and the Ingush left a few thousand dead, and tens of thousands displaced. After the Beslan school siege three years ago, when over 1200 people were taken hostage by terrorists and over 330 were killed, most of them – children, UNICEF officials had to consider ways to confront the ensuing escalation in violence. The Peace and Tolerance project came out of direct partnership with regional governments and has been such a success, that this summer marked the third year that UNICEF holds such programs. In Dagestan the Education Ministry has given such a support to the project that tolerance and peace were officially included in the curriculum in the whole of 56 local schools. “While we also teach tolerance and peace in schools, at the camps children have practical experience about what this means”, explains Rashed Mustafa, head of UNICEF in the North Caucasus. “They come into contact with their peers from other nationalities, and this strengthens their belief that tolerance is both needed and is possible”. “Before we rarely had contact, and I had a stereotype of these people”, says 15-year-old Zaur Makiev from Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. After ten days at UNICEF’s Peace and Tolerance help he starts to see things differently. “We used to think that Ingush and Chechens were very violent people, but now we see that’s not the case”, he says. “We should not fight with them and we need to all get along and respect each other. They are just like us”. “It’s probably too late to try to change something about adult people”, says another camper, Chechen Milana Artzaeva, aged 15, from Grozny. “I think it is very important that camps like this are trying to change our, children’s attitude and educate us to be tolerant in already this young age”. In 1994, when the first military campaign in Chechnya began, Milana’s family had to flee the country and came back only ten years later. “I didn’t see all the horrors of the war, but later, when we returned, my classmates told me what they saw”, recollects Milana, whose goal now is to become a political leader. “I heard many tragic stories”. And some of them were just too much to bear, and anti-Russian feelings became a problem for the girl. Now she says the trainings at the camp gave her a better understanding of how to deal with these emotions. “The lessons we learnt here will have a direct impact on the future of our region. The children here are the leaders of tomorrow”.
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