… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …
An article by Phill Gittins in World Beyond War
The Recommendation offers a further policy reference point across the Council of Europe’s 46 member states. Its significance will depend on how far it contributes to work already underway to advance a culture of peace and nonviolence, challenge cultures of war and violence, deepen meaningful youth participation, and inform policy, practice, and research.
On July 8, 2026, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted Recommendation CM/Rec(2026)11 on Peace Education by, with and for Young People and took note of its explanatory memorandum.
(Click on image to enlarge)Committee of Ministers recommendations set out common policy agreed by member states. They are not legally binding, but provide a policy framework and proposals for national action. This Recommendation sets out principles and measures to help member states recognize, support, and strengthen peace education by, with, and for young people across youth policy, youth work, non-formal learning, and wider educational settings. Grounded in human rights and meaningful youth participation, it can be interpreted and adapted in different national and local contexts.
Its relevance extends to peace educators and teachers; youth workers; young people and youth organizations; peacebuilding and civil society organizations; researchers, funders, policymakers and public authorities.
The Recommendation comes at a time when many young people are living with war, militarization, polarization, disinformation, hate speech, inequality, ecological crisis and declining trust in democratic institutions.
Peace education is not an optional addition to education, youth work or peacebuilding. It can help people understand conflict, challenge violence and injustice, care for relationships and communities, work across differences and create more peaceful alternatives.
Adoption matters, but the real test is what follows.
The process leading to the Recommendation
The process leading to the Recommendation unfolded over more than three years through consultation, research, drafting, dialogue and negotiation. It formed part of a much longer Council of Europe youth-sector engagement with peace, human rights and youth participation.
One significant step was the Council of Europe Youth Department’s Consultative Meeting on Renewing Peace Education in Intercultural Youth Activities, held at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg on January 24-25, 2023.
The gathering brought together 35 people working across peace education, peacebuilding and conflict transformation to review and renew approaches to peace education in light of contemporary realities and young people’s concerns, including armed conflict.
The Joint Council on Youth subsequently asked the Council of Europe Secretariat to examine the need and possibilities for a Committee of Ministers recommendation.
Dr. Phill Gittins, Education Director at World BEYOND War, was then invited to research and author a Feasibility Study on a Recommendation on Peace Education in Non-formal Learning and Youth Work.
Completed in October 2024, the study drew on policy frameworks, existing research and practice, surveys, interviews and contributions from people working in different contexts. It examined the case for a Recommendation, what it might address and how it could contribute to strengthening the recognition, accessibility, quality and impact of peace education.
The study also highlighted a continuing gap between growing recognition of peace education and the political commitment, resources and accountability needed to support it nationally and locally.
In October 2024, the Joint Council on Youth endorsed the conclusions of the feasibility study and established a drafting group.
Gittins was subsequently engaged as the Council of Europe consultant responsible for preparing the initial and successive drafts of the Recommendation and its explanatory memorandum, reflecting the orientations, decisions and proposals of the drafting group.
The group brought together governmental and non-governmental youth representatives, young people, experts and Council of Europe colleagues. It held its first in-person meeting in Strasbourg in March 2025, followed by a second meeting in June 2025.
The work continued through successive drafts, consultation, feedback, legal and policy review, revision and negotiation. In March 2026, the Joint Council on Youth finalized the draft Recommendation, preparing the way for its adoption by the Committee of Ministers.
The process brought together different experiences, responsibilities and understandings of peace, education, security and youth participation. That diversity made the work demanding, but also strengthened it. The challenge was to secure intergovernmental agreement while keeping the text meaningful, ambitious and useful.
The Recommendation is therefore the product of a wider collective effort: participants in the 2023 meeting; contributors to the feasibility study; the governmental and non-governmental representatives, young people and experts in the drafting group; and colleagues who supported consultation, revision, negotiation, legal and policy review, finalization and adoption.
Building on existing work
Although the Recommendation is new, the work it brings together is not.
Within the Council of Europe, it builds on longstanding work in human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, intercultural learning, youth participation, youth work and non-formal education, alongside peace education, peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
This history includes the Youth Peace Camp, initiated in 2003; resources such as Compass; support provided through the European Youth Foundation; and the youth sector’s co-management system, through which governmental and non-governmental youth representatives participate in shared decision-making.
Beyond the Council of Europe, the Recommendation draws on decades of peace-education theory, research and practice and on the work of peace educators, teachers, youth workers, young peacebuilders, civil society organizations, researchers and communities seeking to prevent violence, transform conflict and build more peaceful and just societies.
It complements UNESCO’s 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goal 4.7, which provide an important global framework for education that contributes to peace, human rights, global citizenship and sustainable development.
It also sits alongside the United Nations Youth, Peace and Security agenda, which has strengthened international recognition of young people’s agency and their roles in preventing conflict and building and sustaining peace.
The Recommendation is not a substitute for this work, but a further contribution to it. It brings these different strands together within a Council of Europe policy standard focused on peace education by, with and for young people, while offering a shared reference point for continued debate, learning and practice.
Against this wider background, two features are particularly distinctive.
1. It explicitly connects advancing a culture of peace with challenging cultures of war and violence
Peace is more than the absence of war or violence. It involves cultivating the relationships, capacities, values, cultures and institutions needed for peaceful, just and inclusive societies.
Dialogue, tolerance and interpersonal conflict management matter, but they are not enough.
Peace education must also examine the systems, narratives and practices through which war and violence are prepared, justified and normalized.
From a World BEYOND War perspective, a culture of peace cannot be credibly advanced while cultures of war and violence remain unseen or unchallenged.
War is prepared not only on battlefields, but through political choices, institutions, economic priorities, educational practices and assumptions about security and power.
How can we promote a human rights, peace based education?
The feasibility study reflected these connected purposes: education about, for and toward a culture of peace and nonviolence, based on human rights, and away from cultures of war and violence.
Building more peaceful alternatives and questioning what makes violence appear normal, necessary or inevitable are inseparable tasks.
2. It places peace education by, with and for young people at the center
Too much work involving young people is still designed without them, delivered to them or carried out for them.
Young people may be consulted only after important decisions have been made, while holding little influence over the purpose, design, implementation or evaluation of the work.
The drafting process sought to reflect the Recommendation’s commitment to youth participation. Young people and non-governmental youth representatives contributed to discussion, drafting and revision alongside governmental representatives, experts and Council of Europe colleagues.
This does not mean that differences in authority, role and institutional power disappeared. No participatory process is perfect. Nevertheless, youth participation was built into the process rather than added only after the main decisions had been made.
Young people are not merely beneficiaries of peace education. They are knowledge-holders, educators, organizers, researchers, decision-makers, co-creators and peacebuilders.
Peace education by, with and for young people therefore depends on meaningful participation, youth leadership, shared responsibility and intergenerational collaboration, with genuine opportunities to influence decisions that affect young people’s lives.
Supporting these commitments in practice
The Recommendation also considers the conditions needed to sustain these commitments.
Peace education too often depends on short-term projects, temporary grants and committed people working without adequate recognition or institutional support.
The Recommendation can support existing efforts to move beyond isolated activities by providing a basis for stronger integration into youth policy, youth work, non-formal learning and wider educational environments.
This means looking beyond curriculum content to the conditions that sustain meaningful work: professional learning, institutional recognition, coordination, adequate resources and accessible opportunities.
The Recommendation cannot create these conditions by itself. Progress will depend on political commitment, institutional follow-through and the ability to translate a shared policy framework into locally relevant practice.
Who can use the Recommendation — and how?
The Recommendation should not be treated only as a statement of principles. It can be used as a practical tool by different groups.
Peace educators, teachers and youth workers can use it to review and strengthen curricula, programs, training and learning environments, and to make the case for greater recognition, professional development and support.
Young people and youth organizations can use it to strengthen advocacy, call for meaningful participation and adequate resources, and assess whether policies and programs are genuinely being developed by, with and for young people.
Peacebuilding and civil society organizations and networks can use it to build alliances, engage governments and institutions, identify gaps between commitments and practice, and encourage stronger implementation.
Policymakers and public authorities can use it to review and develop policies, implementation plans, funding priorities, professional learning and coordination across peace education, youth and related sectors.
Funders and institutions can use it to support longer-term investment in people, organizations, partnerships and educational infrastructure.
Researchers and evaluators can use it as a reference point for examining access, quality, youth influence, institutional change and the longer-term contribution of peace education.`
Used in these ways, the Recommendation can support advocacy, policy development, program design, institutional reflection, research, evaluation and public accountability. Its value will ultimately be judged less by how often it is cited than by whether it informs decisions, resources and practice.
From policy to practice
Policies do not implement themselves.
The challenge is to turn this standard into meaningful practice without allowing implementation to become top-down, standardized or disconnected from people on the ground.
Shared principles do not require identical programs. Priorities will differ across contexts shaped by armed conflict, racism, political exclusion, community violence, ecological insecurity or deep polarization.
Implementation will therefore need to be locally interpreted, adapted and co-created.
Governments and institutions have responsibilities that cannot be transferred to young people or civil society. At the same time, implementation will be weaker if it does not draw on the knowledge of those already doing the work in communities, schools, universities, youth organizations and non-formal learning settings.
Young people must remain involved not simply as participants, but as partners in deciding what implementation should look like and how progress should be assessed.
Supporting dissemination, exchange and continued learning
The Council of Europe has indicated that the next phase will include promoting the Recommendation through social media and partner networks, alongside planning to support its translation and implementation in member states.
Gittins is also exploring two complementary possibilities, subject to the interest and agreement of others involved:
Webinars and exchanges with organizations and networks working on peace education, youth work, education policy and Youth, Peace and Security. These could explore how the Recommendation relates to other international frameworks, including UNESCO’s 2023 Recommendation, and how its principles might be interpreted and adapted in different national and local contexts.
Reflective and scholarly writing arising from the development process. Ideas include a collaborative article on co-creation, participation and negotiation involving members of the drafting group, including young people; a dialogical piece bringing together different experiences and perspectives; and a personal reflexive account of the process, including its tensions, compromises and learning.
These ideas remain at an early stage. Their purpose would not simply be to promote the Recommendation, but to encourage critical engagement, knowledge exchange and shared learning about its possibilities, limitations and practical use.
Adoption is an achievement, not the endpoint
Will peace educators, young people and youth organizations know about and use the Recommendation? Will governments support its aims through policy, programming, funding and professional development? Will progress be assessed and shortcomings addressed?
Peace education alone cannot resolve every conflict or dismantle every structure that sustains war and violence. It must form part of wider political, economic, social, institutional and cultural change.
But no credible attempt to build lasting peace can neglect how people learn to understand conflict, challenge injustice, question violence, care for relationships and communities, work across differences and create more peaceful alternatives.
Recommendation CM/Rec(2026)11 can add weight and practical direction to this wider work.
Its adoption deserves celebration, but its significance will depend on what follows: collaboration, resources, critical reflection, political commitment and continued engagement from peace educators, young people and those working on the ground.
That is the work that now begins.
Dr. Phill Gittins is Education Director at World BEYOND War. He authored the Council of Europe feasibility study and later served as the consultant responsible for preparing successive drafts of the Recommendation and its explanatory memorandum, in collaboration with the drafting group and the Council of Europe Secretariat.
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