Description
This study explores the challenges and opportunities of Peace Education in Colombia’s peacebuilding process, emphasizing its marginalisation amid security-focused agendas. Despite formal recognition through the Peace Chair (Cátedra de la Paz), Peace Education remains secondary in national policy and practice, contributing to persistent vulnerabilities—such as the continued recruitment of child soldiers, as noted by the UN Security Council—and underscoring the need for integrated, interdisciplinary approaches. Through a critical microanalysis of discourses from government officials, media actors, and peace educators, the study uncovers divergent understandings of peace—ranging from structural reform and territorial security to emotional and behavioural development—that produce fragmented practices and forms of invisibility, hindering collective transformation. To address these tensions, the article integrates frameworks of agonistic peace and decolonial peace education, challenging liberal, consensus-oriented models and redefining peace as an open, dynamic, and contested process where dissent, affect, and plurality are central to democratic life. By bridging micro-level pedagogical practice with structural change and situating Colombia’s peacebuilding experience within debates on the decolonisation of knowledge in International Studies, the study offers a forward-looking contribution to reimagining global pedagogies and epistemologies within the field.
