Children in Cote d'Ivoire learn about peace from UNICEF-sponsored curriculum.

• Position: News and notes

(UN News Service) Children in post-conflict southern Cote d'Ivoire are learning to substitute concepts of peace and forgiveness for hate and intolerance in a curriculum co-sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Through the Peace and Tolerance curriculum, we have been able to reach thousands of children who otherwise only know messages of hate and distrust. This curriculum allows us to counteract those messages in every lesson in the classroom," UNICEF's Youssouf Oomar said in the main city, Abidjan. "This way we're hoping that reconciliation and peace are not just slogans on their classroom walls."

UNICEF and its partners introduced the curriculum late last year to teach the children in a country bitterly divided by war that protection, peace and tolerance are not just words.

"What is the most important thing for a child?" teacher Florence Abo Kossia asks her class. A lively little boy volunteers the first answer: "The right to have...