Education is one of the four pillars of UNHCR's Public Awareness work. This section of UNHCR's website provides a wide range of educational resources including modules of lessons that help the integration of refugee issues into the classroom.

The educational resources should help students analyse, clarify, judge and acquire values in the following areas:

Empathy

Students should be able to imagine sensitively the viewpoints and feelings of other people, particularly those belonging to groups, cultures and nations other than their own, including refugees. These are people who have been rejected in their own countries, and need to feel welcomed, rather than rejected and isolated in their country of refuge.

Self-respect

Students should have a sense of their own worth and pride in their own particular social, cultural and family background.

Respect for others

Students should have a sense of worth of others, particularly of those with social, cultural and family backgrounds different to their own. Students should be encouraged to reject sexual, racial and ethnic stereotypes, including xenophobic sentiments directed against refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants generally.

Global concern

Students should recognise the essential interdependence of peoples of our planet.

Environmental concern

Students should have a sense of respect for the natural environment and our overall place in the web of life. They should also have a sense of responsibility for both the local and global environment. The majority of refugees today are found in refugee camps in the marginal regions of poor, developing countries.

Open-mindedness

Students should be willing to approach different sources of information, people and events, with a critical but open mind.

Vision

Students should be open to, and value, the various dreams and visions of what a better world might look like both in their own community, in other communities and in the world as a whole.

Social responsibility

Students should value genuinely democratic principles and processes and be ready to work for a more just, secure and peaceful world at local, national and international levels. They should develop a commitment not only to defending their rights, but to accepting and fulfilling their responsibilities as well.