ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: Educators and civil society representatives on Tuesday stressed promotion of religious tolerance, diversity, and conflict resolution through education. They proposed more focused, widespread and specialized in-service training for human rights, and citizenship education.

They also proposed to adapt a curriculum that could integrate citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution. Theses recommendations were adopted at the conclusion of a two-day workshop on citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution in education here on Tuesday.

Federal Education Minister Zubaida Jalal was the chief guest at the concluding ceremony of the workshop organized by 'Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi' (ITA) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The workshop was attended by 100 educators from all the four provinces and Northern Areas. The participants of the workshop discussed ways for producing teaching materials, networking directory and enhancing pedagogical skills in human rights, citizenship and conflict resolution education.

At the end of the workshop the participants came up with a number of recommendations which were presented to the joint education adviser, ministry of education, Dr Haroona Jatoi.

The workshop recommended more focused, widespread and specialised in-service training for human rights, citizenship education and to target more of the rural areas and under-privileged areas for starting pilot projects.

The participants proposed to improve the quality of teachers' training programmes, both pre-service and in-service and cultural exchanges between provinces and interaction of students.

Promotion of religious tolerance and diversity and use of "child to child" communication methodology was also recommended. The participants also recommended supporting management at the school level for promoting rights-based practices in the classrooms.

They also proposed to adapt curriculum to integrate citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution education and a wider dissemination of the modules, CD-roms and supplementary teacher training materials produced by the Citizens Rights and Responsibilities, Pakistan (CRRP).

The education minister endorsed the outputs of the CRRP which included textbooks, teacher training modules, 25 trained master trainers educators supplementary materials and curriculum support IT based materials.

She also appreciated the efforts of CIDA, IED of The Aga Khan University, ITA and the provincial education departments. Ms Jalal said such programmes should be adopted on a long-term basis to train youth for achieving a progressive enlightened Pakistan.

She said it was the responsibility of teachers to train youth which comprise 25 per cent of the country's population. Representatives from international organizations such as USAID, Unicef, Unesco, ILO, and others also attended the workshop.