"Their burnt eyes and their coughs express their suffering more eloquently than any words"
While visiting the Hiroshima Peace Museum the founders of the Tehran Peace Museum realized the necessity of involving the victims of war in the creation of the museum. Only these individuals could provide credible accounts of the harsh realities of war and their correlating desire for peace.
When you first hear of a "Peace museum" you may be slightly mystified or perhaps even a bit skeptical. It is easy to imagine what goes into a war museum but what can you put in a peace museum? And if the peace movement is to be represented in a museum does that mean it is being relegated to the past?
Currently housed in a building donated by the municipality of Tehran within the historic City Park, the Tehran Peace Museum is as much an interactive peace center as a museum. It coordinates a peace education program that holds workshops and hosts conferences on the culture of peace, reconciliation, international humanitarian law, disarmament and peace advocacy.
Its founding began with a conversation between the founder of the Tehran-based Society for Chemical Weapons Victims support (SCWVS) and a coordinator for the international Peace Museums Network in 2005. This, as well as a visit to Hiroshima, Japan by members of SCWVS a year before, prompted the desire for a museum in Tehran.
