Learning for Peace: Lessons Learned from UNICEF’s Peacebuilding, Education, and Advocacy in Conflict-Affected Context Programme

Abstract

Conflict and insecurity have been described as the “primary development challenge of our time” (World Bank Group, 2011, p. 1). Whereas mediation, diplomacy, security, reconstruction, and government and economic reforms, continue to play an essential role in building and sustaining peace, recent discussions have also focused on the importance of addressing inequity, as well as the exclusion from basic social services (education, water, health and nutrition, social protection, early childhood development) (United Nations & World Bank Group, 2018). UNICEF’s “Learning for Peace” programme – implemented from 2012 to 2016 – presents a recent example of how social development services can be leveraged not only to meet children’s developmental, protection, and cultural needs and rights, but also to contribute to the mitigation of conflict factors. This chapter summarizes lessons learned from the implementation of “Learning for Peace” across 14 fragile and post-conflict countries. A theoretical framework for understanding education’s contributions to conflict and peace as well as a monitoring and evaluation framework for assessing its contributions toward social cohesion, will be introduced.