September 19-22, 2014 8th International Conference of Museums for Peace, No Gun Ri (NGR) International Peace Foundation,

South Korea The conference was convened under the joint aegis of the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP) and the NGR
International Peace Foundation. The topic of the conference was on the Role of Museums for Peace in preventing War and Promoting Remembrance, Historical Truth and Reconciliation. The UCV is a member of the INMP and submitted the conference paper: „The role of Peace Museums in mobilizing youth towards a future without war‟. Introduction: This paper will explore the role of youth seen as agents of change for peace, their role as agents for change in museums and the potential for expanding the space for the engagement of youth in the peace museum network with the aim to mobilize youth towards imagining a future without war. “Increasing recognition of the essential role of youth in peace-building is now beginning to manifest itself in efforts to actualize that role. The future moral, social, and political challenge will be to see whether humanity can mobilize the energy, creativity, and vision of youth in pursuit of peace as successfully as it has in pursuit of war.”

Dr. Roshan Danesh, University of British Columbia (Canada), the European Peace University (Austria), British Columbia Justice Institute and senior member of International Education for Peace Institute. The immediacy of war and conflict reported through the media continues to sensitize generations of individuals to a continuing state of conflict and fear. Military-backed corporate governments and global concerns have a clear interest in reinforcing a scepticism of peace processes, with peace advocates and movements being characterized at best naïve and irrelevant and at worst unpatriotic, anti-democratic and subversive. A particular challenge for Peace Museums is to instil confidence that peace is not just a nostalgic buzz-word word on a T-shirt but a desirable as well as an attainable state of being.