Goal 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institution

Sustainable development depends on a peaceful world free of conflict, injustice, and abuse. Peacebuilding is a better of taking individual actions for resilient communities, standing up for human rights, and being an active citizen in governance structures. 

Instructions:

The leader reads out different scenarios, and for each problem participants create ways to solve it. You could split the group into teams and give each a style of problem solving (such as aggressive or diplomatic), or work as a group to come up with the different ways.  

Groups can volunteer to act out how the scene might go based on the solution they’ve come up with.  

Example  

Scenario number 1: “While playing, a group of kids threw their ball into the window of the neighbour house and break it. The neighbour is very angry and doesn’t want to give the ball back.” What do you do to get the ball back?  

The diplomatic team could suggest saying sorry and asking nicely for their ball back. The fighting team could suggest shouting at the neighbour and demanding or grabbing their ball back, or creating a way to take their ball back without the neighbour noticing. 

Scenario number 2: “During break at school, two students are yelling at each other because one accuses the other of stealing his marble.” What do you do to make them friends again?  

Debrief:  

• Which method do you think works better?  
• What method do you use in your daily life?  

Instructions:

Start by assigning each patrol a fairy tale trial, choosing stories your group are familiar with.

Examples:  

• The three pigs versus the wolf, for destruction of property  
• Goldilocks versus the three bears, for breaking and entering  
• The Emperor versus the state, for public indecency 

In each group they should choose who will take on the roles described below, the judge and jury will be made up of the members of the other patrols. 

• Prosecution barrister – needs to prove that the person is guilty.  
• Defence barrister – needs to put doubt in the jury’s mind about whether the person is guilty or not.  
• Witness – the people who may have knowledge of the crime, they need to give evidence to the court.
• Defendant – the person who is on trial.
• Judge – manages the trial.
• Jury – decides the verdict based on the evidence they hear.

During the first meeting, the prosecution and defence barristers should work with their witnesses to develop statements, and create their cases. Encourage them to read the story of their fairy tale to find evidence, and to think about who the character is, where they were when the crime happened, what they saw etc.  

In the second meeting, host the trials, below is a rough outline of proceedings :

1. Defendant is asked to state their name and charges, asked if they plead guilty or not guilty  
2. Prosecution makes their opening statement  
3. Prosecution takes their first witness to the stand and questions them. Questions should help their witness tell their story. 
4. Defence Barrister cross examines prosecutions witness, they should ask questions that try to make holes in the witnesses story  
5. Prosecution calls their second witness, repeats as above until all prosecution witnesses have spoken  
6. Defence barrister makes their opening statement  
7. Defence barrister calls the Defendant to the stand, questions them to help tell their side of the story 
8. Prosecution cross examines  
9. Defence calls any other witness they have, and step 7 and 8 are repeated  
10. Prosecution make their closing speech  
11. Defence makes their closing speech  
12. Jury are given time to discuss what they’ve heard and reach a decision (guilty or not guilty)  
13. Jury delivers their verdict  
14. Judge gives a sentence if guilty, closes the case 

Debrief:  

• Do you think trials can be unfair? In what way?  
• Do you think a trial like this is the fairest way of deciding if someone is guilty? 
• What do you think can be done to ensure everyone is treated the same way in court?  

Instructions:

• Take your group to go and visit a group of elderly people in the community or invite them to join you at your meeting place.
• Encourage participants to ask discuss the past and ask questions to learn more.

Example questions:

• What was it like growing up?
• What was different about our country/world when you were my age?
• Was anything changing in our country/world?
• How was it changed and were people helping to change it?
• Was anything bad happening in the country/world?

You could make visits a regular event for your group or collaborate on a project with the people they met.

Instructions:

Have participants work together to make an anti-bullying campaign. They could create a guideline for what someone should do if they see or know about someone being bullied, or something to promote anti bullying. Participants could use their guidelines to create activities to teach younger groups what they can do to help tackle bullying.