On 22-23 September, the OPCW held an innovative conference at their headquarters in The Hague titled OPCW Education and Outreach Event: Education for Peace – New Pathways for Securing Chemical Disarmament.  

 

OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcüopens the Education   for Peace Conference at The Hague, September 22, 2104

The Tehran Peace Museum, represented by Elizabeth Lewis, delivered a presentation on two of the Tehran Peace Museum’s latest oral history projects.

 

 In line with the museum’s main peace education objective of building a culture of positive peace, Ms. Lewis began by sharing the bi-lingual recording of the histories of the chemical weapons survivors from the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). The rationale behind this initiative is to record the eyewitness accounts of survivors of the chemical attacks and to share their stories via the Internet in both Farsi and English.

 

These very personal accounts of the horrors of the impact of chemical weapons can be found on the museum’s website. The OPCW has kindly included,on its own website, a link to this work on its chemical weapons victims’ page.

 

 

Elizabeth Lewis speaking about the Tehran Peace Museum’s oral history projects at the OPCW Peace Education conference, September 23 2014

Ms. Lewis also introduced the Tehran Peace Museum’s new and exciting youth peace education project, The Young Reporters.  This youth initiative brings in middle and high school students from public schools in Tehran to the peace museum.  The students have volunteered to engage in an oral history project of interviewing the Iran-Iraq War’s chemical weapons survivors.

 

In examining the consequences of chemical weapons from the perspective of young people, this project has enabled Tehran’s youth to better understand the life situation of chemical weapons victims. It has also introduced to them the idea of chemical weapons disarmament and their responsibility in building a culture of peace in their environment.

 

 

The bi-lingual histories of the chemical weapons survivors can be read on the Tehran Peace Museum’s website by following this link: http://bit.ly/TMccFB.

The OPCW has published one of the stories here: http://www.opcw.org/special-sections/victims-of-chemical-weapons-network/faride-shafai/.