Education, Conflict and Development

Book excerpt: Under various names – education and conflict, education and fragility, education and insecurity, etc – the understanding of linkages between education and violent conflict has emerged as an important and pressing area of inquiry. Work and research by practitioners and scholars has clearly pointed to the negative potential of education to contribute to and entrench violent conflict. This work has highlighted the struggle for education during and following periods of instability and demonstrated the degree to which communities affected by conflict prioritize educational opportunities. It has also offered powerful normative arguments for the importance of quality education for peacebuilding, reconciliation, postconflict reconstruction and development. In many instances, however, these important insights are derived less from rigorous research and scholarship in the social sciences than from the delivery and evaluation of educational programming in situations affected by conflict. This volume, therefore, seeks to broaden enquiry into education and conflict by exploring, through conceptual and empirical work, its linkages to broader theories and practices of development and peacebuilding. The volume begins with a conceptual and theoretical section, followed by a series of international case studies, before closing with three chapters focused on the case of Northern Uganda. Contributors present a diverse set of studies that together deepen understandings of the ways the education functions in various situations affected by conflict and the ways in which it might best be mobilized to contribute towards peacebuilding and development.