A new study sheds light on the relationship between education and justice in conflict situations, focusing on how to foster the respect for human rights and democracy from and towards the classroom.
Ground-breaking research
To gain a stronger understanding of how education can help countries dealing with legacies of conflict and mass atrocities, the International Center for Transitional Justice(ICTJ) has partnered with UNICEF on an ambitious research project examining these synergies between education and transitional justice in peacebuilding contexts.
After two and a half years of work examining experiences in sixteen countries, the study “ Education and Transitional Justice: Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding” highlights the main findings of the extensive research and provides policymakers and practitioners with practical guidance for linking education to the development of transitional justice measures.
In countries emerging from conflict or dictatorship, the risk of recurrence of violence is real. The way in which societies learn about and remember the past – how and why mass atrocity occurred – can enlarge or reduce this risk.
Because of this dynamic across generations, education is shown to plan a crucial role in transitional justice processes. Despite the evident significance of education in transitional societies, how it intertwines with transitional justice had not yet been researched in depth.
Looking at education from a different angle
The study, published today, explores the following two questions:
- How can transitional justice contribute to peacebuilding goals by shaping the reform of education systems and facilitating the reintegration of children and youth into those systems?
- How can education serve to promote the goals of transitional justice by expanding its outreach agenda and helping change a culture of impunity into one of respect for human rights and the democratic rule of law?
One major finding of the project is that educational systems are more entangled in conflict than is often thought. “There is not only the idea that education can help to portray a new message of change,” underlines Clara Ramírez-Barat, ICT Research Associate. “In itself education is an institution or a part of the social construct that needs to be changed. The study forces us to look at education from a different angle and to appreciate how education can (…) play a constructive role”.