A Long Road If We Don’t Walk Together

The Anlong Veng Peace Center is dedicated to memory, reconciliation, and peace building, and it achieves these objectives through peace studies and genocide education. Peace studies represent the Center’s effort to identify and analyze violent and non-violent behaviors as well as structural mechanisms that precipitate conflict. Genocide education represents the Center’s effort to establish curricula that address the fundamental questions of what happened and why during the Khmer Rouge period. Both educational approaches are utilized with a view toward encouraging peace, education, and the rule of law. The Center’s new headquarters office is situated in Anlong Veng—the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge regime. Working closely with the local community, schools, and tourism officials, the Center looks forward to bridging the divide between the former Khmer Rouge (KR) and Cambodia’s younger generation. The intent of the Center is to provide a variety of educational and tourism-related programs that help preserve the oral and physical history of the region as well as building peace and reconciliation between generations and across social divides. The Center not only aims to provide a critical understanding of Cambodia’s violent history, but it also seeks to convey a basic understanding of different theories on conflict resolution and transformation. Using its new office space as a headquarters, the Center will meet its objectives through future programs centering on interactive discussions, guided tours of local historical sites, and a curriculum that uses individual stories to convey historical and moral lessons.