[hr-education] Peace education in refugee communities in Kenya and Uganda

[***Moderator's note: This contribution originally appeared on id21
Education - http://www.id21.org/education/ ***]

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.

The results of the full studies can be found in:

"Peace Education and Refugee Youth" by M. Sommers, in: J. Crisp, C.
Talbot and D. B. Cipollone (eds.), Learning for a Future: Refugee
Education in Developing Countries (Geneva: UNHCR, 2001)
http://www.unhcr.ch/pubs/epau/learningfuture/ch04.pdf

Learning for a Future: Refugee Education in Developing Countries
(Geneva: UNHCR, 2001)
http://www.unhcr.ch/pubs/epau/learningfuture/learningtoc.htm

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

 
 

 
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