The Symposium brought together a range of education stakeholders including Ministers of Education,representatives of international and non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, bilateral development organizations, the private sector, civil society organizations, and leading national and international research agencies to discuss the importance of conflict-sensitive education in conflict-affected societies, and to share good practices for inclusion of conflict-sensitivity in education systems. The Symposium equally provided an occasion to formally launch the INEE Conflict-Sensitive Education Pack that includes the INEE Guiding Principles and INEE Guidance Note on conflict-sensitivity in education, and the INEE Reflection Tool for designing and implementing conflict-sensitive education programmes.
Building upon the INEE Minimum Standards, the Guidance Note introduces key concepts related to conflict-sensitive education; offers strategies for implementing programs and policies in a conflict-sensitive manner; features conflict analysis activities and tools; and offers case studies on the application of conflict-sensitivity in education from Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Colombia. The Reflection Tool provides a comprehensive framework of questions for reflection on the interaction between conflict and educational policies and programmes, and opportunities for conflict-sensitivity and peacebuilding in intervention planning. It is designed to aid integration of conflict sensitivity at all stages of the educational project cycle: assessment, design, implementation/management, monitoring and evaluation.
Opening statements at the Symposium by Khalil Mahshi, Director of IIEP, Lori Heninger, Director of INEE, and Yoland Miller-Grandvaux, Co-Chair of the INEE Working Group on Education and Fragility and Senior Education Advisor at USAID in New York, underscored the need of children and young people for quality, equitable, relevant and safe education. In their remarks, the opening speakers emphasized that conflict-sensitive approaches to education contributes to peacebuilding in important ways: “frustrated youth” can be constructively engaged; resilience can be built in states, economies and communities; and conflict and fragility can be mitigated. Panel discussions centred on “Building peaceful societies in a post-2015 world” and “National initiatives and plans to develop conflict-sensitive education policies and programmes”.
In the first panel, Qian Tang, Assistant Director General of Education at UNESCO emphasized that education is a pillar for all development goals. He drew attention, however, to two oversights in international development cooperation concerning the immediate and longer-term importance of education. First, educational responses in post-disaster and post-conflict situations should be immediate but humanitarian budgets allocate very little
towards education. Mr. Tang observed that the international community still does not recognize how important education is to post-crisis recovery. Second, the value of education is not merely technical but civic. The ultimate objective of education is not to read and write, in Mr. Tang’s words, but to raise responsible citizens who respect human rights and can live peacefully with other cultures. The second panellist, Ms. Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director of UNICEF and current Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for
Education, underscored the importance of pursuing post-2015 education goals in an integrative manner. She pointed to the tendency among the international community to “pick low-hanging fruit”, meaning getting children into schools without looking at the broader and deeper needs in the education sector. She claimed that a mood of “complacency” has overtaken the international community with regards to education, as evidenced by the levelling off of financial investment. Unlike public health interventions, such as immunization programmes
whose value-for-dollar is easy to prove, educational investment is a longer-term process and is harder to assess. She called upon humanitarian and development sectors to collaborate more deliberately for the sake of increasing the quality of educational investment in post-crisis settings.
Between panels, Maria Lucia Uribe, Coordinator of the INEE Working Group on Education and Fragility, launched the INEE Conflict-Sensitive Educational toolkit, explaining its structure, contents and purposes. Martha Hewison from Save the Children UK then shared her organization’s experience piloting the tools for conflict-sensitive education in several countries, including Somalia, Mali and South Sudan. Lessons learned from field-testing were used by the Working Group to refine the tools.
In the second panel, case studies on the provision of conflict-sensitive education in conflict-affected and fragile contexts were offered by the Minister of Education of Palestine, H.E. Ms Lamis Alami, the Minister of Education of Liberia, H.E. Ms Etmonia Tarpeh, and the Minister of Education of Mali, H.E. Mr. Bocar Moussa Diarra. In Liberia, for example, the Minister explained that due to the country’s long history of armed violence, there is widespread trauma among teachers and students. In her words, children are exposed to violence, “antisocial activity” and “negative values” from an early age, resulting in children “involuntarily” and prematurely becoming adults. In such a context, she said, the challenge before the education sector is “huge”. She underscored that the need for peacebuilding and statebuilding in Liberia is paramount. In this context, the involvement of UNESCO in the training of 1300 teachers and the delivery of a values education curriculum sponsored by the government of Japan has been a welcome step forward. The Minister concluded her remarks by stating Liberia’s need to “restore dignity and sanity to the education sector for the benefit of the next generation”.
Challenges raised by delegates included the need for greater attention to the longer-term psychosocial impacts of mass violence on communities and the need for more attention to the substance of education in post-conflict and fragile societies. The representative of the permanent mission of Algeria to UNESCO, Prof. Noureddine Toualbi-Thaalibi, cited the largely unaddressed psychosocial damage resulting from Algeria’s history of
violent conflict. As in other violence-affected countries, he explained that the symptoms of the destructiveness of violence are not fully evident in the immediate post-crisis phase; rather, they emerge over time. He argued that without systematic attention by the international community to the psychological reconstruction of children, youth and teachers, the achievement of other educational objectives in violence-affected societies will remain elusive. In response, panellist Carole Bellamy offered that “psychosocial issues are real” and that the traumatic impacts of violence “need to be kept in mind”. The tools produced by the INEE on Conflict-Sensitive Education do indeed point to the importance of violence-prevention and psychosocial wellbeing of children, but at this stage make little reference to the importance of violence-recovery. Another important issue, raised by the Ambassador of Norway to UNESCO, H.E. Mr. Tore Erikson, concerned the content of education. He acknowledged that while getting children to school in fragile contexts is a very challenging task, even more important is the substance of the education they receive once there. He asked what the implications of conflict-sensitive approaches to education are for such topics as the teaching of conflict histories, the design of language policies in divided societies, the uprooting of ideologies and the cultivation of tolerance.
The main programme was followed by a narrative concert by Peter Yarrow, former member of the American folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary which was actively involved in the American Civil Rights and Peace movements. Since 2000, Peter has dedicated much of his time to the organization Operation Respect that offers programmes on bullying and violence prevention. Through the use of creative pedagogies, Operation Respect’s “Don’t Laugh At Me” programme cultivates empathy and solidarity among young people. Sharing songs and anecdotes from the programme’s experiences in Israel, Palestine and the United States, Peter drew attention to the critical importance of social and emotional learning as a key to community resilience and peacebuilding. In his words, educators should “nurture the hearts of children in a non-political ways”. Extending the remarks of the Ambassador of Norway, Peter underlined that how students are taught is as important, if not more important, than what they are taught. The academic growth of children is impossible, he argued, if their fundamental social and emotional needs are neglected.
To conclude the international gathering, delegates and participants of the Symposium endorsed a Declaration that calls for the prioritization of conflict-sensitive approches to education in crisis-affected countries.