Co-ordinating education during emergencies and reconstruction: challenges and responsibilities

This book explores co-ordination of education delivery in and after emergencies. It discusses the reasons why humanitarian and United Nations agencies frequently fail to coordinate with one another or with the governments of countries affected by emergencies and notes the negative results of this, and provides recommendations on actions which humanitarian agencies, national governments and donor governments can take to improve this.

The book illustrates its arguments with practical examples from recent international emergency and reconstruction efforts, and makes extensive use of excerpts from interviews with officials from donor and recipient government, United Nations agencies, and non-government humanitarian agencies. Case studies from Afghanistan, Southern Sudan, and Sierra Leone are examined in detail.

The most important reasons for the failure of co-ordination of education in emergencies are identified as:

• desire for speedy responses, while coordination, particularly with governments of affected countries, requires a considerable time investment
• competition among humanitarian agencies for scarce resources and public recognition discourages inter-agency coordination
• relationships between international agencies and host governments characterised by mistrust and disrespect.

Additional reasons include:

• a perception or reality of government corruption
• NGOs may be more responsive to their donor governments’ priorities rather than internal priorities
• the tendency to consider humanitarian relief work and development as sequential, with a consequent lack of planning for education during relief work.

The failure to coordinate can result in programmes which are chaotic, contradictory or unhelpful, which fail to build or even undermine the capacity of sovereign governments, and which contradict the priorities of local communities.

The author argues that coordinated responses, particularly where governments are included, can result in better long-term outcomes in the quality of education. They can also contribute to nation- and peace-building and social reconstruction, and reduce risks to and long-term trauma for children and young people.

Recommendations include:

• governments of countries receiving relief and development aid need to assert themselves with donors and humanitarian agencies and develop educational plans and priorities, be prepared to coordinate education activities, set guidelines for accepting or rejecting education projects, establish requirements for organisations to collaborate with government, and ensure that efforts contribute to national priorities
• major donors and agencies should compel agencies to coordinate by making it a condition of funding
• the role of UNESCO in emergencies needs to be more clearly defined
• planning during the early stages of an emergency must incorporate the development of long-term plans for education from the outset of emergency and reconstruction work, and should include national government authorities and ministries from the outset
• national government officials should be provided with technical training, including support for developing national education plans.