Education For Peace: Issues and Challenges

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Education For Peace Issues and Challenges

• LINS NGO Forum, HiO
• 22 May 2007
• Kendra Dupuy, Researcher
• International Peace Research Institute, Oslo
  (PRIO)

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Armed Conflict

• Armed conflict The contested incompatibility
  that concerns government or territory or both,
  where the use of armed force between two parties
  results in at least 25 battle deaths. Of these
  two parties, at least one is the government of a
  state. (Uppsala Conflict Data Project)
• Not considering other forms of social violence
  such as riots, crime, oppression, or terrorism

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Armed Conflict

• Internal armed conflict the dominant form of
  conflict worldwide since the end of World War 2
• 115 armed conflicts 1989-2001, nearly all
  internal (civil war) and primarily in
  developing/poor countries
• 1980s to present day Sierra Leone, Liberia,
  Ivory Coast, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Angola,
  Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, former Yugoslavia,
  Chechnya, Guatemala, Columbia, Haiti, Lebanon,
  Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Indonesia,
  Philippines, Sri Lanka (and many more, especially
  if we look from 1950s through present day)

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Impact of Armed Conflict on (Formal) Education

• Armed conflict limits or stops educational
  provision
• Focus within international community (INEE
  UNESCO)
• SC estimate 43 million out of 113 million
  children worldwide out of school due to armed
  conflict
• Schools, infrastructure, materials are looted,
  vandalized, damaged, destroyed
• Students, teachers are killed, injured, abducted,
  recruited others flee and become refugees/IDPs
  with limited (if any) access to education
  in/external brain drain of educated persons
• Fear, insecurity, trauma, hunger, lost income no
  school
• National funding diverted away from education to
  defense

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Relationship Between Education and Armed Conflict

• Education can play a role in fueling the outbreak
  of armed conflict
• Stereotyping, cultural suppression, and
  perpetuation of intolerant and militant
  ideologies in textbooks, by teachers
• Violence of varying degrees at school fear,
  shame, humiliation, exploitation, discrimination,
  competition, and physical violence at schools
• Lack of access and unequal access to education,
  and the production and reproduction of social
  inequalities through education

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Education and Peace

• Negative vs. Positive peace
• Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in
  the minds of men that the defenses of peace must
  be constructed. (UNESCO Constitution, 1945)
• Attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values contribute
  to peace respect, tolerance.
• Stability of social structures
• Strengthen democracy connections between
  democracy, political/social stability, education
  and peace
• Educational provision as a peace dividend to end
  conflict satisfying potential spoilers of the
  peace?
• Protection of children from involvement in
  conflict?
• Critical thinking skills (or control?)

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Education for Peace Issues, Challenges

• Phases pre-conflict, during conflict,
  post-conflict
• Context root causes of the conflict (Greed?
  Access to resources? Grievance over exclusion?
  Identity based?)
• Context nature of the conflict (refugees, child
  soldiers, damage?) and dealing with the legacy of
  the conflict
• How to rebuild an education system that promotes
  peace hardware, software, teachers? Outcomes?
  Decentralization? Equity or equality? Priorities?
• Is peace education enough?

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