The role of peace education in refugee communities

Education programmes can incorporate the skills, understanding and attitudes needed for peace and conflict prevention. But can peace education be justified when agencies are already stretched to provide basic education and needs? Is it possible to make initiatives socially and culturally relevant to people experiencing extreme stress?

Research from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, examines peace education concepts, assumptions and programmes that are being conducted by international humanitarian agencies for refugee populations. It highlights the lives of refugee youth, a primary peace education target group. Findings centre on a promising peace education programme run by UNHCR for refugees in Kenya and Uganda. The report considers how peace programmes meet the security challenges confronting refugee communities in general and refugee youth in particular.

Field research indicated that the UNHCR peace education initiative appeared to be generally positive, even while some UNHCR officials expressed skepticism and a limited commitment for the programme. More broadly, promoting peace can be hard to achieve and success hard to measure. Why, as one staff member asked, should agencies teach peace to victims of aggression and not to their aggressors?

The author finds that the UNHCR programme:

• promotes refugee empowerment and self-sufficiency and helps bridge the cultural gaps between refugees
• has a practical orientation and set of objectives that naturally and appropriately connect to the objectives and values inherent in refugee protection and education
• is popular with refugees. Refugees in the programme not only continued but also sometimes expanded the programme themselves.
• is cost-effective.

The report also indicates a number of weaknesses relevant not just to UNHCR’s programme but the broader peace education field, including:

• a tendency to focus on training leaders to address serious violence. Leaders often lack credibility with and access to the primary perpetrators and victims of violence: marginalised youth. 
• the limited participation of marginalised ‘drop-out’ youths, young women and wider community members. This limits a programme’s potential to transfer problem-solving skills to refugees who are likely to benefit from the experience the most.
• limited  co-ordination between different development agencies. For example, skills and concepts taught in different workshops and courses offered by a range of agencies often overlap.
• the possibility of peace education becoming counter-productive when it is taught to children and not to their parents or guardians.

Recommendations to those responsible for peace education programmes include:

• targeting those most in need of peace education training, such as marginalised youth. The tendency of peace education programmes to target already peaceful people is a significant weakness of the field.
• employing peace education programming to address issues of pressing concern, such as sexual violence against women and other protection concerns
• translating materials into mother tongues to ensure the inclusion of non-elites and taking care to ensure that the concepts of peace education are culturally appropriate
• giving programme co-ordination a high priority, both with other peace education programmes working with the same population in the same region, including those programmes with different titles (such as life or communication skills) that cover much of the same content

 

Source(s):
'Peace Education and Refugee Youth' by M. Sommers, in 'Learning for a Future: Refugee Education in Developing Countries' edited by J. Crisp, C. Talbot and D. B. Cipollone, UNHCR, 2001
'Learning for a Future: Refugee Education in Developing Countries', UNHCR 2001

Funded by: U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration

id21 Research Highlight: 7 September 2005

Further Information:
Marc Sommers
African Studies Center
Boston University
270 Bay State Road
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
USA

Contact the contributor: msommers@bu.edu

African Studies Center, Boston University, USA

Other related links:
'Educating young people in emergencies: Time to end the neglect' id21 insights education 4

'Surviving school: educating Rwanda’s children after the war'

'Using schools to overcome sectarian conflict'

'Emergency tactics: education in crisis situations'

'Learning for a Future: Bhutanese Refugee Camps in Nepal'

'Education for all in conflict affected countries: an impossible goal?'

See id21's links page on educating young people in emergencies