It is highly requested that the international community, national governments, civil society and militias commit themselves more strongly to childhood and adolescence as a time for education and not for involvement in armed conflict. It is recommended that more systematic efforts be made to link the themes of human rights and humanitarian law to protecting the rights of children and adolescents in emergency situations, -protection from recruitment and abuse in its various forms, and positive entitlement to education. We need a clear and integrated statement of the protection which schools should enjoy in times of conflict, under humanitarian law, and of the implications for the child’s and adolescent’s right to education of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which almost all governments have committed their nations. This may be undertaken and the results widely disseminated as a contribution to the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.

We recommend as standard procedure that needs assessments for emergency education and training programmes be structured to give the maximum information on possible constraints on female participation and on ways to overcome these constraints. It is necessary that a gender strategy be developed for all emergency education programmes, and that specific resourcing be sought to permit the implement this strategy. Agencies should make equal participation of girls and women in educational activities, -through culturally appropriate structures and arrangements, a precondition for assistance.

This assessment shows that the international community has begun the work of education in emergencies, but that there is a need for deeper professional analysis and evaluation of needs, coverage, methodologies, and outcomes, to provide the basis on the one hand for more effective programmes and on the other for greater commitment of donor resources. The personal enthusiasms of individual educators and the seat-of-the-pants allocation of resources by non-specialist programme officers based on media exposure of an emergency need to be replaced by professionalism based on depth analysis of field situations and data.

We recommend, based on the current analysis, that the initiatives described previously be continued and expanded, with a more adequate and secure resource base, including :

These programmes represent an investment for peace, and for moving towards sustainable social, economic and cultural development. (30)

2.1 Strategic planning from the beginning of an emergency

Educational intervention in an emergency should not be seen as a relief effort, similar to the distribution of cooking pots and blankets. The actions taken in the early months may have a lasting impact on educational structures and processes. From the beginning, education should be seen as a critically important dimension of national reconstruction. Educational planners should be working towards innovative, culturally appropriate, community-based, sustainable and equitable post-crisis education systems. It is recommended that inter-agency strategic planning workshops be convened at the beginning of any new emergency (as well as regularly thereafter), including educational administrators of the country or countries concerned and educators from the affected communities as well as educators from assistance agencies and concerned NGOs. The conclusions of these workshops should be recorded for future reference, -especially important in emergency situations where there is often a high level of turnover of personnel.

Some agencies have mandates to assist refugees, the displaced and victims of ‘emergencies’. Other agencies have mandates to assist in the work of ‘development’. As shown in this Theme Paper, things can go very wrong if there is not dovetailing of external support as between organisations whose mandate is for emergencies and those focussed on development. There are often different sections dealing with humanitarian response and with development, within UN and multilateral agencies, bilateral donors, NGOs and national governments.

From the viewpoint of donors, we recommend that the distinction between ‘emergency’ and ‘development’ be disregarded in the case of education, since education is a long-term investment that brings forth its fruits way into the future. In general, communities emerging from disaster can help themselves in terms of simple educational activities of a non-formal nature, but reconstruction of a recognisable education system requires resources for curricula, textbooks, education materials, teacher training and supervision, and the administration of examinations. It is recommended therefore that leading donor agencies in particular, develop and announce a policy and mechanisms to ensure that resources are available for the education of refugees, internally displaced, returnees and citizens of countries enduring chronic instability or entering the phase of reconstruction, without gaps and discontinuities arising from bureaucratic and mandate issues.

2.3 Linking peace-related projects undertaken by humanitarian agencies to the UN Year (2000) and Decade (2001-2010) for the Culture of Peace

Major initiatives in education for peace, life skills, democracy/ civil society and human rights are being established by agencies working in complex humanitarian emergencies. These activities are at an early stage, and there is a need for sharing of experience, as well as for independent research and evaluation of programme design and impact. We recommend that:

• Humanitarian and developmental organisations should work together to develop ways of promoting peace and civil society through their formal and non-formal education programmes for refugee, crisis and transition situations, as part of the UN Year (2000) for the Culture of Peace and Decade (2001-2010) for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World. (31)
• A World Conference on Education for the Culture of Peace in Humanitarian Emergencies, Post-Conflict and Transition Situations should be scheduled for the year 2001 or 2002 as a contribution to the Decade.

As noted above, the field of education in complex emergencies has suffered from a lack of systematic study and there is an atmosphere of improvisation which hampers effectiveness. It is recommended that education in complex emergencies should be given the intellectual attention it deserves, through applied research and evaluation, and through the development of training courses and modules on this topic.

Norms and standards should be developed, to create greater coherence of programming and to strengthen donor confidence. Inter-agency sharing of existing education materials and guidelines for education in complex emergencies is likewise needed as a first step towards more effective programmes and to ensure the best use of scarce resources.

3.1 Development of norms and procedures for early emergency response

There is growing recognition of the importance of early response to the educational and psychosocial needs of children and communities affected by complex emergencies. Systematic review of experience and in-depth research is urgently needed.

We recommend that there should be a technical evaluation the early phase of educational response in recent complex emergencies; including use of the various educational/ recreational kits and other approaches to planning and resourcing early emergency response and including deployment of specialist personnel, training of teachers, etc. Psychosocial impact and the role of early activities in laying the foundations for development-oriented programmes should likewise be evaluated. (32)

The general principles of the right to education in complex emergencies and the role of education in building towards sustainable and peaceful development need to be translated into specific norms and practices. This is essential if donors are to provide the catalytic inputs that enable governments, NGOs and, especially, affected populations to develop educational programmes of meaningful quality, and adapted to current and future needs. Mechanisms for validation and certification of studies need to be strengthened for the hundreds of thousands of students in refugee, chronic conflict and post-conflict situations for whom this is a problem. The recommendations in this matter could be:

• Issues regarding certification of studies by refugees and other emergency-affected populations should be reviewed and certification structures should be put in place based on this review.(33 )

At present, much knowledge on education in emergency situations is scattered among the organisations and personnel currently or previously working in this field. It is descriptive rather than based on evaluation. Research studies are needed, to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of responses in a range of situations selected to illustrate the type and stage of the crisis, as well as regional differences.

To further deepen and stabilise the field of education in emergencies and post-conflict reconstruction, it is important to develop and institutionalise training in this field, suited to the professionals working in assistance agencies and to national officials in emergency-affected countries. So many countries are now affected by natural or man-made disasters and conflicts, either directly, or through events in neighbouring countries, that education in emergencies and for prevention of conflict, should indeed feature in all courses of education planning and management for the foreseeable future. This training should draw on the accumulated experience of the various UN agencies and NGOs, as well as the hoped-for academic studies of particular situations.

We recommend that:

• Leading academic and research institutions in the field of education should be encouraged to enter the field of education in complex emergencies, through research, evaluation, training and related activities, drawing on the experience of field practitioners. University departments or research institutes with specialist knowledge of particular crisis-affected areas of the world may be encouraged to include the education dimension among their concerns. (34)

• Post-conflict units in major international funding institutions as well as academic bodies should study ways of reconstructing education systems that can permit education to contribute to durable solutions and peaceful and sustainable development.

UN and multilateral agencies, NGOs and others have developed materials for use in complex emergencies, that could usefully be shared, including documents in use or in pilot form for emergency teacher training, environmental education, mine awareness, education for peace, conflict resolution and human rights, health education, etc. These materials are scattered and in consequence resources are wasted in ‘re-inventing the wheel’.

It is recommended that an annotated inventory of relevant education materials, manuals and guidelines should be prepared, on an inter-agency basis, and key documents should be made available as a resource pack to organisations working in emergency and post-conflict education. This inventory should indicate the languages in which materials are available and key items should be translated into relevant internationally used languages (including English and French). Resource Bases for Emergency Education should be established at regional level. (35)

The GINIE (Global Information Networks in Education) internet site on education in emergency and humanitarian situations should continue to developed as a database in this area. (36)

There has been a long history of inter-agency consultations on education in emergencies. Several attempts have been made to systematise inter-agency cooperation, but with limited success, due in part to the costs involved in communications between organisations based in different continents and countries. Another problem has been that contact between headquarters personnel did not result in sharing of experience between the respective field staff with their particular concerns.

It is to be hoped that in the future, the existence of electronic communications will help overcome these problems. The process has already begun. It should be possible routinely to include interested persons in concerned organisations, through email networking, when these organisations have identified appropriate internal mechanisms and focal points.

The range of topics is great, however, and some nodes or focal points focusing on particular topics may be needed. There should be a more structured architecture for inter-agency cooperation to serve the needs of the coming decade, with a strong field base. We recommend that: