Rapid educational response in complex emergencies: a discussion ...

UNESCO-IBE • UNESCO-UIE • UNICEF • UNHCR

RAPID EDUCATIONAL RESPONSEIN COMPLEX EMERGENCIES:A discussion document

By Pilar Aguilar and Gonzalo Retamal

ContentsIntroduction, page 3

I. Basic policy instruments and framework for education in complex emergencies, page 5

II. Phased development of the basiceducation programmes, page 8

II.1. Introduction, page 8

II.2.Emergency situations, page 9

II.3.Rapid response, page 10

II.4.Non-formal education, page 16

II.5.Emergency response teaching kitsand materials, page 16

II.6. Implementation procedures,emergency phase education, page 26

II.7.Reintroduction of the curriculum, page 26

III. Supplementary survival packages, page 33

III.1.Mine-awareness education, page 33

III.2.Cholera awareness and waterbornediseases, page 37

III.3.Environmental awareness, page 39

III.4.Education for peace and reconciliation, page 41

IV. The physical educational environmentin complex emergencies, page 45

IV.1.Site planning andeducational shelter ,page 45

IV.2.Tented schools, page 45

List of acronyms and abbreviations, page 47

Select bibliography, page 47

Published in 1998 by the International Bureau of Education, P.O. Box 199, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland.This book has been published thanks to the financial participation of UNICEF/EMOPS and the UNESCO Institute for Education.Cover photo: Benaco Refugee Camp, United Republic of Tanzania, May 1994 (PHOTO: Don Edkins/WCC)Printed in France by SADAG, Bellegarde

The ideas and opinions expressed in thiswork are those of the authors and do notnecessarily represent the views ofUNESCO,UNHCR or UNICEF. The designa-tions employed and the presentation ofthe material in this publication do notimply the expression of any opinion what-soever on the part of UNESCO, UNHCR orUNICEF concerning the legal status of anycountry, territory, city or area, or of itsauthorities,or concerning the delimitationof its frontiers or boundaries.

ForewordWith the fall of the Berlin Wall, the new world order has been challengedby the appearance of religious, ethnic and nationalistic conflicts markedby profound inhumanity and violence. New and old forms of intolerancehave generated uncontrollable and complex emergencies. It is estimatedthat nearly 100 million people are caught up in a cycle of civil strife,whileabout 50 million of them have been forced to flee their homes. As aresponse to this need, United Nations Resolution 46/182 created theDepartment of Humanitarian Affairs in 1994.The associated policy frame-work defined for the first time the role and importance of inter-agencyco-ordination in crisis situations. Intervention in humanitarian emergen-cies is now adapting to the provision of schools and adult education inorder to ensure the education of the next generation.

This document is an attempt to open a dialogue among educators work-ing in the area of complex emergencies. It recognizes that most of thenewly tested educational interventions lack a long-term perspective.Education, whether for peace and reconciliation or in the reconstructionof human resources, is hardly addressed at present. The case studiesdescribed here provide a vivid account of an approach using kits. Clearly,different contexts and levels of emergency warrant different kinds ofresponse. Thus, there is the need for further research from field experi-ences,especially at the levels of rehabilitation of formal education systemsand curricula and of adult learning.

UNICEF and UNESCO, as well as the other UN agencies, believe in theimportance of using a developmental approach from the earliest stage, ofworking quickly to empower communities to take the lead in identifyingtheir own formal and non-formal educational needs and developing theresponse.The case studies described here will hopefully fuel a vigorousand constructive debate about a wide range of issues relating to rapid edu-cational responses in emergency and post-conflict situations. While thefield-based approaches described here do not necessarily include all thekey principles and strategies which UNICEF, UNHCR and UNESCO havedeveloped in the past, they provide a valuable set of experiences for dis-cussion and review.We welcome this document, and the discussion it willgenerate between partners in improving the situation of children, youth,women and adults—victims of organized violence.Although further actionis required in order to establish a strategy in the field of education for com-plex emergencies and refugees, what emerges as essential is increasingcommunication among educators in the field.

In this perspective, the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) can con-tribute from its modest perspective to the assessment of the actualpractices and policy considerations in the area of adult and lifelong learn-ing, including young adults, among the populations concerned.We wouldlike to think of this contribution as a first step towards a collective effort fordialogue and a testimony for other educators and humanitarian workers.

UNHCR’s follow-up strategy to the Machel Study—endorsed by theOffice’s Executive Committee in 1997—established the provision of basiceducation and recreation activities for refugee children and adolescents as aprincipal protection objective in the initial phase of an emergency. UNHCRis therefore eager to develop operational modalities and partnerships toensure this performance objective is met to the maximum extent possible.

In this way,we hope this book will initiate a broader view of the role andimpact of initial as well as further education in the perspective of lifelonglearning as a practice for dialogue in the extreme circumstances of politi-cal crisis and social confrontation. We are grateful to the InternationalBureau of Education (IBE), especially to Mr John Fox and Ms Erin Dorsey,for having contributed to the finalization of this publication.

Paul Bélanger, Director, UNESCO Institute for EducationNils Kastberg, Director, UNICEF/EMOPS

John Horekens, Director, Division of Operational Support, UNHCR

It is estimated that half of the world’srefugees are children. According to recentstatistics, the total refugee populationamounted to approximately 13.2 millionpeople at the beginning of 1997.1 At that date, the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) pro-vided protection and care to over 6 millionrefugee children world-wide.

The most fundamental challenge for anyinternational organization wishing to miti-gate the suffering of children affected bywar is to ensure their very survival andwell being.The United Nations Children’sFund (UNICEF), in 1996, reported thatwithin the last decade 2 million childdeaths had occurred due to war. Themajority of these victims died during civilwars, indiscriminate attacks and ‘ethniccleansing’, such as in Bosnia and Rwanda,where children and young adults were sys-tematically targeted as the enemy’s futuregenerations.

The means by which children may beprotected from armed conflict was thetheme of a recent Graça Machel2 study pre-sented to the United Nations GeneralAssembly on the 8 November 1996.

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA) currently maintains field co-ordi-nation arrangements affecting populationsin sixteen countries and one region. Inter-Agency Appeals reaching nearly US$9 bil-lion have been sought to satisfy the mosturgent needs of these populations.

On-going political and economic instabil-ity impede access to regular education forlarge numbers of war-affected children andyoung adults. This brochure represents aneffort to consolidate a systematic responseto the special needs of children from theoutset of the crisis until they can attendregular basic education. It also attempts toensure that at least minimum teachingstandards have been met.

The central aim of this document onrapid educational response is to provide apractical tool, and to explain and illustrateeach phase of an emergency responseusing mainly the UNHCR Guidelines.3

This publication is comprised of fourparts.• Part One summarizes the basic policy

instruments that advocate education as achild’s right. The 1989 Convention on

the Rights of the Child (CRC) is especial-ly highlighted since it has been adoptedby UNHCR and UNESCO as a normativeinstrument.

• Part Two analyses and illustrates the dif-ferent phases of emergency responseusing recent examples of humanitarianeducational interventions, including dis-placed, refugee and returnee situations.Examples of actual field experiences areincluded. In addition, further informationand reading are included in the foot-notes.

• Part Three shows how the basic core ofnon-formal education may be expandedto cover threats facing populations everyday.

• Part Four presents some suggestions forthe provision of temporary classrooms.

The present book addresses the field prac-titioners and specialists (as well as non-specialists) who have to implement basiceducation, especially in situations of com-plex emergencies. It is modest in scopeand does not pretend to provide allthe answers to a complex reality.However, due to the increasing prob-lem of children and young adults asvictims of organized violence, systemsare needed for rapid educationalresponse.This publication intends to con-tribute to emergency preparedness in thefield of basic education.

1 United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees, The state of the world’s refugees: ahumanitarian agenda, 1997-98, Oxford, UK,Oxford University Press, 1997.

2 Report of the Expert of the Secretary-General(Graça Machel), Impact of armed conflict onchildren, Commission on Human Rights, fifty-second session, Economic and Social Council,E/CN.4/1996/110, New York, 15 February 1996.

3 UNHCR, Revised guidelines for educational assis-tance to refugees, Geneva, PTSS/UNHCR, 1995.

3

Introduction

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4

CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Article 28: The child’s right to education

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall in particular:

(a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;*(b) Encourage the development of different forms of secondary education, including

general and vocational education, make them available and accessible to every child, and take appropriate measures such as the introduction of free education and offering financial assistance in case of need;

(c) Make higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means;

(d) Make educational and vocational information and guidance available and accessible to all children;

(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity and in conformity with the present Convention.

3. States Parties shall promote and encourage international co-operation in matters relating to education, in particular with a view to contributing to the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy throughout the world and facilitating access to scientific and technical knowledge and modern teaching methods. In this regard, particular account shall be taken of the needs of developing countries.

Article 29: The aims of education

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:(a) The development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and

physical abilities to their fullest potential; (b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,

and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;(c) The development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity,

language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from where she or he may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment.2. No part of the present article or article 28 shall be construed so as to interfere with

the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions, subject always to the observance of the principles set forth in paragraph 1 of the present article, and to the requirements that the education given in such institutions shall conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State.

* = Our emphasis.

Part One describes the basic policy instru-ments in which the rights of children andyoung adults to education are endorsed,including the 1951 Convention Relating tothe Status of Refugees. The Convention onthe Rights of the Child,which was adoptedby the General Assembly of the UnitedNations in 1989, has become one of themost useful tools to assess and advocatefor the needs of children in general, includ-ing those children and young adults inwar-affected countries.

I.1 The Convention on theRights of the Child,1989

The Convention on the Rights of the Child1

(CRC) has gained widespread ratificationby States Parties. In 1997, almost all Stateshad signed the CRC,which establishes thatchildren under 18 years of age (Article 1)have specific rights without discriminationof any kind. This is particularly relevant torefugee children because it establishesbroad standards and may be used as the pri-mary basis for protecting them.2 However,this only applies when a State is a party tothe CRC, and not to another treaty con-cerned with refugees. The convention triesto take into consideration all aspects of thechild’s life, from health and education tosocial and political rights. According toUNHCR’s Policy on Refugee Children(1993), the CRC ‘constitutes a normativeframe of reference for UNHCR’s action’ onbehalf of refugee children. This section’smain focus addresses Articles 28 and 29 of the CRC, which specifically refer to education.• Article 28 of the Convention estab-

lishes the child’s right to education.Education is recognized to be essentialfor all children.This Article establishesthe core minimum targets for educa-tion—free,compulsory primary educa-tion for all—and different forms of sec-ondary education and vocational guid-ance available and accessible to all.Higher education must be accessibleon the basis of capacity.

• Article 29 describes a general consen-sus regarding the aims of education.In essence, it addresses learning’sbasic aims: to develop children’s fullpotential and to prepare them for aresponsible life in a free society.Furthermore,the Article advocates therights of individuals and groups toestablish educational institutions, aslong as they fulfil the aims of educa-tion set out in the Article and any offi-cial minimum standards. This is partic-ularly relevant in the context ofrefugee education, for which mini-mum standards have recently beendeveloped by UNHCR (see Tables 1and 2,pages 8 and 9).

5

I. Basic policy instruments and framework for education in complex emergencies

UNESCO’s MEDIUM-TERM PLANWith regard to emergency assistance, UNESCO hasbecome a strong advocate in the internationalcommunity of the idea that humanitarian assistancecannot be reduced merely to the supply of food, medicineand blankets; that there must be a close link betweenthe concept of ‘relief’, ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘long-termdevelopment’; and that emergency operations mustinclude from the beginning a local training component.This idea has gained ground: there is growing recognitionof the principle that victims of conflicts have an equallyinalienable right to education as all other human beings.UNESCO’s strategy therefore consists in endeavouringto set up temporary educational structures in emergencysituations, particularly for displaced persons andrefugees. There, too, the Organization’s role can only beas a catalyst: it is not so much to build schools or printtextbooks as to assess priority needs, formulatestrategies to meet them in conjunction with UNHCR,UNICEF and WFP and contribute to the formulation ofconsolidated appeals for international humanitarianassistance co-ordinated by UNDHA.3

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1 UNICEF, Implementation handbook for theConvention on the Rights of the Child, preparedby R. Hodgkin and Peter Newell, Geneva,UNICEF, 1998. (Further reference to the CRC isfrom the same source.)

2 UNHCR, Refugee children: guidelines on protec-tion and care, Geneva, UNHCR, 1994, p. 19.

3 UNESCO, Medium-term strategy, 1996–2001,Paris, 1996.

By applying Article 28.1(a) of theConvention to all children without dis-crimination, education must therefore beavailable and accessible to children whohave been victims of organized violence.A State may not actively deny any child theright to an education within its territory.

Article 31 of the Convention promotesthe child’s right to rest, leisure, play, and toparticipate fully in cultural and artistic life.Thus,there is a need to provide operationalsupport in order to develop recreationaland leisure activities at camp level andamong IDP communities.

I.2 Convention Relating to theStatus of Refugees,1951

The right of refugee children to a publiceducation was spelled out in Article 22 ofthe 1951 Convention Relating to the Statusof Refugees. It established that ‘theContracting States shall accord to refugeesthe same treatment as is accorded tonationals with respect to elementary edu-cation.’

Today, when the rights of children havebeen blatantly violated, the role of fieldpractitioners—UN agencies, governmentagencies, non-governmental organizations,and other international and national organi-zations, etc.—are vital in the overwhelm-ing task of translating the child’s rightsinto action. All parties concerned musttake effective action when the child’srights are violated or neglected.

There have been some examples of howfield experience and educational out-comes have changed institutional strate-gies and programme guidelines. The Ngaraexperience of educational intervention forRwandan refugees (see page 19) helped todefine options in the UNHCR Guidelines.In the same vein, inter-governmental con-sensus among ministries of education fromthe Southern African region was reached in1990 on the acceptance of using theMozambican curriculum for refugee schoolchildren from Mozambique. The principleof ‘education for repatriation’ applied tothe Mozambican refugee population inZimbabwe and Malawi had a significantimpact on the traditional interpretation ofthe 1951 Convention.5

I.3 Early intervention duringemergencies

As education is considered crucial to thedevelopment of children, UNICEF, UNHCRand UNESCO apply the Convention on theRights of the Child6 to their own work byusing these rights as guiding principles. Asdescribed in the 1990 World Conferenceon Education for All in Jomtien, refugeesand displaced persons are often an ‘under-served group’.

The present publication, althoughinspired largely by the earlier guidelinesand institutional frameworks,also attempts

6 Basic policy instruments

UNHCR EMERGENCY RESPONSE

In 1992, the UNHCR Executive Committee demanded thatbasic education be better addressed and that, even in theearly stages of emergencies educational requirementsbe identified, so that prompt attention may be given tosuch needs.

UNHCR’s follow-up strategy to the Machel Study—endorsed by the Office’s Executive Committee in 1997—established the provision of basic education and recre-ation activities for refugee children and adolescents asa principal protection objective in the initial phase of anemergency. UNHCR is therefore eager to develop opera-tional modalities and partnerships to ensure this perfor-mance objective is met to the maximum extent possible.

UNICEF will collaborate with UNHCR to ensure conti-nuity in approach, content and teacher training betweenrefugee basic education and the basic education systemin the country of origin. UNICEF, in its collaboration withnational authorities to rehabilitate or develop the basiceducation system of the country of origin, will collabo-rate with UNHCR to facilitate access for returnee chil-dren to national schools.

Both agencies will co-ordinate with UNESCO in rela-tion to basic education activities.4

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4 UNHCR, UNICEF, Memorandum of understand-ing between UNHCR and UNICEF, Geneva, 1996.(Paras. 31–32, p. 7–8.)

5 UNHCR, Report of the Seminar of Education andProtection for Mozambican Refugees in the SouthernAfrican Region, Harare, 14-19 January 1990.

6 UNHCR, Refugee children: guidelines on protec-tion and care, Geneva, 1994.

… vulnerable populations who

have been victims of man-made or

natural disasters.

to widen its potential use in problematicsituations where persons have fled theirhomes but do not necessarily cross bor-ders. Internally displaced persons (IDPs)and other vulnerable populations whohave been victims of man-made or naturaldisasters are confronted with similar situa-tions that refugee populations face.

The new political framework faced bythe Post-Cold War era has forced the inter-national community to give priority in itsagenda to a new strategy for peace-keepingand humanitarian assistance. As a responseto this need, United Nations Resolution46/182 created guidelines in order toensure an international mandate that isable to provide ‘a continuum of actionfrom early warning prevention and pre-paredness to humanitarian relief and thetransition to rehabilitation and develop-ment.’7 However, no clear reference ismade to the role education should play incomplex emergencies.

This document proposes a step-by-stepstrategy, taking into consideration thediverse phases in the continuum fromrelief to development. At the same time itsuggests strategies for preparedness, whilehighlighting some of the recent teachingexperiences linked to this phased

approach. Nevertheless, one of the mainlimitations of this proposal is the need forfurther research and systematic evaluationof the impact of present and past experi-ences of educational interventions of thiskind. As explained by Aguilar andRichmond in the case of Rwanda:

The technical impact of education as a tool forchanging behaviours and attitudes of an illiter-ate or semi-illiterate population affected bycholera or the landmine threat, and in generalby the trauma of war, needs to be furtherassessed. This requires a specific technicalknowledge where educational strategies canpartially be the result of standardized logisticresponses (i.e. school supplies) but alsorequire specific cultural and linguistic adapta-tions that can only be developed as a rapidresponse by joint technical teams of local andinternational educators (i.e. curriculum andeducational programme development).8

7Basic policy instruments

… humanitarianrelief and thetransition to rehabilitation anddevelopment.

7 United Nations, Secretary-General’s Report onStrengthening of the Co-ordination ofEmergency Humanitarian Assistance, 21 June1994. (UN document N° A/49/177/E/1994/80,)

8 P. Aguilar and M. Richmond, Emergency educa-tional response in the Rwandan Crisis, in: G.Retamal and R. Aedo-Richmond, eds., Educationas a humanitarian response, London, Cassell,1998, p. 139.

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8II. Phased development of

the basic education programmes

TABLE 1.Objectives for

basic education in

UNHCR-funded schools

II.1. Introduction

Part Two of this document aims to providefield practitioners/managers, staff of non-governmental organizations, United Nationsand other international agencies, refugeecommunity workers,or a relevant institutionof the host government, with pragmaticeducational strategies for rapid educationalresponse in a post-crisis situation.A special-ist—as well as the non-specialist—shouldconsider it a supporting document. It isbelieved that the strategies offered havebeen tested in recent emergency situations,especially in Africa, and have contributed tothe overall protection of children and young

adults. They are drawn from differentsources; some directly related to complexemergencies and others associated withwider trends and developments.

Usually, education is perceived as adevelopmental initiative. Thus, it is oftenexcluded from the ‘emergency prepared-ness response’. More and more, recenteducational humanitarian interventionshave been perceived as coherentresponses serving two purposes: (a)responding to the humanitarian and psy-cho-social needs of affected children;(b) contributing to the future eco-nomic/human resource development ofcountries in crisis.

PRIMARY (GRADES 1 TO 6) IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING

Objectives Objectives

❍ Provide basic education (sustainable ❍ Develop professional teaching skills literacy/numeracy and life skills); through in-service teacher training;

❍ Meet psycho-social needs of displaced/ ❍ Up-date teachers on subject traumatized children and adolescents; knowledge, psycho-social issues, and

❍ Provide foundation for secondary life-skills, such as health, environment, education (high-achieving students); conflict resolution and human rights;

❍ Prepare children/youth for repatriation, ❍ Prepare teachers for repatriation, reintegration or local settlement. reintegration or local settlement.

Characteristics of the programme Characteristics of the programme

❍ Pre-school classes for children under ❍ Teacher selection based on tests, or 6 years not funded by UNHCR, except performance at ‘new teacher for materials and training; workshop’;

❍ School curriculum based on the ❍ Training to include pedagogy, schoolcountry or area of origin; subjects, meeting children’s psycho-

❍ Language used in the schools in the social needs, and messages regardingcountry of origin; sanitation, health, environmental

❍ Target of primary schooling for all; awareness, conflict resolution and❍ Special afternoon classes for out-of- human rights, etc.;

school children/adolescents, with ❍ Teacher training to be documented appropriate curriculum; and recognized by the country of

❍ Minimum of four hours/day above origin, if possible;class 1, six hours/day after class 4; ❍ In-service training for all teachers

❍ Minimum of five days a week; in vacations/week-ends/special days,❍ Two shifts to increase the number of at least ten days per year

pupils who can receive schooling ❍ In-school training by project educationeach day; advisers and school mentors;

❍ Final examinations recognized by ❍ Refugee teachers to benefit from Education Ministry of country of origin; national training programmes and

❍ Community support mobilized through vice versa, as applicable.a community education committee or a parent/teacher association.

II.2.Emergency situations

There is a clear relationship between emer-gency, rehabilitation and development. Inorder to ensure a smooth transition fromrelief to rehabilitation and development,emergency assistance should already pro-vide ways that are supportive of recoveryand long-term development. Thus, emer-gency measures should be seen as a steptowards long-term development.1

This rationale and a selected number ofcase studies from emergency situationshave to a large extent inspired the phasedapproach described in the next sections.

In addition, the 1995 UNHCR Revisedguidelines for educational assistance torefugees (see footnote 3,page 3) constituteprobably the most updated institutionaleffort to systematize one of the mostimportant aspects of complex emergen-cies in the education sector. It still remainsa valid instrument when dealing with gen-eral humanitarian problems.

Regarding the provision of education incomplex emergencies,three phases of edu-cational response were described in the1995 UNHCR Guidelines:• First phase: Recreational/preparatory;• Second phase: Non-formal schooling;• Third phase: Re-introduction of the

curriculum.The three phases can be presented sep-arately for analytical and technical pur-poses. However, from the point of view offield programme management, especiallyon aspects concerning procurement,stock-piling and distribution of the educationalmaterials and technical support, it is sug-gested that the first and second phases arecombined.

Initially, the first emergency response,placing emphasis on the non-formalapproaches, should be considered as a pro-cess that ‘avoids the technology of formalschooling, thus permitting a more diverseand flexible deployment of space, time,and materials and accepting a relaxation ofpersonal qualifications in response to thestructure of the workplace’,2 and the com-munity living under special humanitariansituations.

The third phase should be consideredwithin the programme scope of whatUNHCR calls care and maintenanceactivities, or in other words, activities

9Phased development of the basic education programmes

TABLE 2.Minimum standards for basic education inUNHCR-funded schools

PRIMARY (GRADES 1–6)

Materials — Grade 1 to 4: slates, chalk, 2 exercise

books;— Grade 5 to 6: at least 6 x 200-page

exercise books;— One reading and one arithmetic

textbook per student;— Other reading materials in resource

centre;— At least one set of all other textbooks

(50 copies) per school.

Infrastructure — Classroom size: about 6m x 7m;— Sanitation facilities and potable water

supply in all schools;— Lockable storage room in each school;— Playground sufficient for recreational

activities;— Staffroom in each school;— Reading room/resource centre in each

school;— Community support in site clearing

and construction.

Equipment— Simple, clean seating for all students,

based on local practice;— Minimum 2.5m blackboard space

per class, regularly repainted;— One portable ABC chart per class;— One portable number chart per class;— One globe per school;— Minimum of one large map, either of

the country of origin or of asylum, per school, with smaller versions in classroom for regular reference;

— Laminated wallcharts in each classroom to make a supportive ‘learning environment’;

— Other educational materials, as appropriate;

— One mimeograph and one laminating machine per project office;

— Sports equipment in each school;— Chair and table for each teacher.

IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING

Materials— One complete set of teaching

manuals per school;— Materials for preparing teaching aids.

1 United Nations General Assembly, 78th PlenaryMeeting, New York, 19 December 1991,Resolution 46/182, Strengthening of the Co-ordi-nation of Humanitarian Emergency Assistance ofthe United Nations.

2 N.J. Colletta, Formal, non-formal, and informaleducation, in: A.C. Tuijman, ed., Internationalencyclopedia of adult education and training,2nd ed., Oxford, UK, Pergamon, 1996, p. 23.

geared towards the stabilization of educa-tional performance. A stage of transitionfrom non-formal to a more formalized pat-tern of curricula will be expected todevelop as part of the process of recon-structing an educational provision or sys-tem in a society emerging from a socio-political crisis or a natural disaster.

What basically is suggested is a flexiblecontinuum of strategies that will be ade-quate to preserve and maintain a securitynet for the psycho-social protection of themost vulnerable,and to help reproduce thebasic educational skills required for theirsurvival.

While humanitarian relief organizationsstretch their efforts and their budgets tomeet basic needs, education is hardly everadequately addressed and is often the firstone targeted for cut-backs during times ofcrisis. Incorporating well-planned and co-ordinated educational programmes intoemergency relief efforts will stabilize thelong-term benefits for societies in crisis.

Education in crisis situations:• helps to prevent conflict and fosters a

peaceful society by encouraging conflictresolution, environmental awareness, tol-erance of diversity,etc;

• encourages preparedness in the pre-emergency stage by monitoring earlywarning signs, developing new materialsand safeguarding them at an interagencylevel, as well as generating planningstrategies to address the needs of emer-gency affected groups;

• serves to normalize the situation byestablishing routines, thereby decreasingpsycho-social stress, addressing theimmediate needs and preparing for a bet-ter post-emergency society;and

• offers a window of opportunity for edu-cational development, innovation andimprovement in the transition fromemergencies.3

II.3.Rapid response

II.3.1.THE IMPORTANCE OF RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES

Rapid educational response shouldbegin with mobilizing interested com-munity members to initiate groupactivities such as games and helpundertake a needs assessment.4

In many emergency situations, more than50% of the population are children andadolescents. The majority of these vulner-able groups have experienced trauma due

10 Phased development of the basic education programmes

… transition fromnon-formal to amore formalized

pattern of curricula

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3 International Bureau of Education, Report: Inter-agency Meeting on Humanitarian Assistanceand Refugees. Meeting held at the InternationalBureau of Education, Geneva, 9-11 May 1996,with the participation of UNESCO, UNHCR,UNICEF, USAID, ICVA and other internationalNGOs.

4 UNHCR, Revised guidelines for educational assis-tance to refugees, Geneva, PTSS/UNHCR, 1995,p. 25.

to the outbreak of violence,the disruptionof families and community structures, aswell as a lack of basic resources. Thisseverely affects their physical and psycho-social well-being. Within this particularcontext, recreational and educationalactivities seem crucial in alleviating stressand raising self-esteem. The first stage

towards providing members of thesegroups with a revival of their ‘destroyedworld’ is to organize semi-structuredrecreational activities.


Mozambiquan children playing in a refugee campin Zambia

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THE IMPORTANCE OF RECREATION

FOR CHILDREN AFFECTED BY ORGANIZED VIOLENCE5

Play is the work of children. Especially during stressful times, parents need to encouragechildren to play. Play allows children to relate to events around them and to expressthese events in their own simplified way. Their participation in community activities canraise their spirits and occupy them in meaningful ways. When we realize how importantplay is for the development of a child, we can recognize the need for providingtraumatized children with a place to play, an opportunity to play and things to play with.They can thus re-enter their development cycle, which has been so violently interrupted.It would seem that the sooner we can intervene with play in the life of a traumatizedchild, the sooner the child can appropriate the healing effects of the play environmentand the sooner hope will re-enter the child’s world.

5 Adapted from Phyllis Kilbourn, Healing the chil-dren of war, MARC, World Vision International,California, 1995.

Throughout the emergency situation, itis important to encourage and providerecreational facilities that children need.Immensely popular are socio-cultural andrecreational activities, such as musicalgroups, dance ensembles, art festivals,sports competitions, football games andgroup outings. Such activities can be organized by the teachers and communityworkers. These activities may, in someway, compensate for the hardships of anuprooted life and facilitate the healingprocess that these traumatic experiencesrequire.

For example,in Lebanon there are a num-ber of centres for Palestinian children andyoung people supported by Save theChildren Fund (SCF/UK), which provide avariety of informal activities. These include

sports and other activities in clubs,residen-tial summer camps for vulnerable childrenand programmes for working children.Volunteers of 16-17 years of age help torun the clubs.These activities are seen ashaving a preventive role, bolstering cultur-al identity and self-esteem and providinginformal support to those living in themost extreme adversity.6

Among children, play is an adaptivemechanism:


PLAY7

Younger children will repeatedly deal with traumatic events in their play or drawings.They may make toys clearly related to the event, or act out parts or the entire traumaticevent in individual and collective play. This, of course, is a way of mastering both thecognitive and emotional aspects of what they have experienced. Play can be very usefulin helping the child work through bad events.

While play usually can give children some relief from feelings, especially anxiety, theyare unable to get any relief from anxiety when the play is repeated anxiety. Adults needto help the child to alter the pattern of play in a way that will help the child to gain somemastery of the situation. This may be done by joining in the child’s play and altering thesequence of events, helping the child, for example, to give a different ending to the event.

Often children identify with the forces that control the dramatic events. Through play,they are able to handle fear and anxiety in their fantasy and thus change the course ofevents and exercise control over what is happening. At times, they take the role of thosein charge, of those in power. Although play is a preferred activity of younger children,it can also be seen in adolescents. They may seek to master the trauma through writtenexpression.

Play can also involve drawing. Through drawings, children can participate in wish-fulfilment, express feelings that are difficut to put into words, and are able to dealwith a traumatic event in a symbolic manner. Role-play and singing also help representwhat they have experienced.

Re-enactment of a traumatic situation is more than just dealing with the trauma inplay. The traumatized child can include the same physical activity, attitudes or fears thattook place right before or during the trauma. The child may also show the same physicalreactions during the actual event (for example fainting, daytime wetting, cramps), andthey may re-enact things that took place immediately before the event (arguing withfriends or adults). Such reactions indicate that the child needs active help.

6 N. Richman, Principles of help for childreninvolved in organised violence, London, Save theChildren, 1995. (SCF working paper, no. 13.)

7 Cole P. Dodge and Magne Raudalen, Reachingchildren in war: Sudan, Uganda and Mozam-bique, Søreidgrend, Norway, UNICEF/SigmaForlag, 1991, p. 35.

One of the earliest signs of emotional distur-bance in a child is the inability to mix and playwith contemporaries. In contrast, psychiatristslearn that if a child has many friends of his/herown age with whom he/she happily plays, it isunlikely that there is a great deal wrong withhim/her emotionally, even if the parents havemany concerns about the child.8

Expression and play can be fundamental inbuilding resilience for the lives of childrenwho have been the victims of armed con-flict.Resilient children have the capacity tomake sense of stressful and traumaticevents confronting them. Helping childrento understand their traumatic experiencesand express them is a fundamental operat-ing principle of successful programmes forchildren living in especially difficult cir-cumstances.9

From an educational point of view, thereis a sufficient amount of evidence that justi-fies these types of interventions.The inte-gration of these recreational and educa-tional activities provides a range of experi-

ences that will offer an opportunity for allchildren to expand their understanding ofthe world and to better communicate theirnew knowledge. Every child is not a visualartist, but some are; every child does notfind expanded meaning through poetryand traditional storytelling as children andyoung adults from nomadic and oral cul-tures do; and every child cannot representan idea in movement and sound as natural-ly, for example, as children can in someAfrican cultures.The challenge, then, is toensure that the range of experiences isbroad enough to reveal each child’s voice,and that those experiences spring from


THE PURPOSE OF THE RECREATIONAL KIT

General objective:— To help children and adolescents rebuild their world and community.

Specific objectives:— To provide children and young people with semi-structured recreational activities;— To assist children and young people in the recovery of their psycho-social

well-being;— To encourage self-expression through different activities.

Activities:— To design, produce and stockpile modules and kits; — To identify and train refugee community workers or refugee teachers as

recreational instructors according to the Instructor’s Guide included in the kit;— To co-ordinate training and distribution of the recreational kit.

Logistics:— It has to be taken into account that some adaptation will be needed, such as

translation of the Instructor’s Guide for training of recreational instructors in theagreed teaching language.

Beneficiaries:— Children and youth, school populations, community workers, teachers.

8 Anthony Storr, The dynamics of creation, NewYork, Ballantine Books, 1993, p. 185. Also on thevalue of play as an adaptive mode see: Erik H.Erikson, The life cycle completed, New York,Norton, 1982, p. 50–51

9 Cassie Landers, Listen to me: protecting the devel-opment of young chidren in armed conflict, NewYork, UNICEF, Office of Emergency Pro-grammes, 1998.

FIGURE 1:Display of the

recreational kit

events that all of the children have sharedin common.10

It will take some time for the standardschool curriculum to be provided to thechildren who are or have been victims oforganized violence. This process may takea few months and in some cases even ayear. Contrary to what one might believe,creativity under these special circum-stances becomes not only a healing mecha-nism,but a learning mechanism for adapta-tion to the new and extreme circum-stances of flight or displacement. WilliamJames once said:

I have no doubt whatever that most peoplelive, whether physically, intellectually, or moral-ly, in a very restricted circle of their potentialbeing. They make use of a very small portion oftheir possible consciousness,and of their soul’sresources in general,much like a man who,outof his whole bodily organism, should get into ahabit of using and moving only his little finger.Great emergencies and crises show us howmuch greater our vital resources are than wehad supposed.

While many curricula in normal circum-stances include lists of textbooks and teach-er references, few of them adequately speci-fy logistical requirements in terms of work-ing and instructional materials,consumablesand equipment, facilities, human resources,and how to estimate time for implementa-tion and the cost. Communication materi-als need to be varied, effective, and interest-ing. If not readily available, they should beprovided to teachers as part of the curricu-lum package.11

Semi-structered packages requiring mini-mal contribution by the teachers willempower children to set their own paceand become more independent.When thecontent and recreational activities are like-ly to be unfamiliar to the teacher, or toteachers in training, a need to differentiateinstruction must be implemented so that asubset of them can proceed to adapt it totheir new circumstances. The prompt sup-ply of materials will help facilitate a timelyresponse.

The materials may be available in a pre-packed form or may be assembled throughlocal purchasing. They will provide basicrecreational material for the first phase ofthe emergency response. Immediately, aprocess of identifying possible teacherswill be set in motion. Most importantly, itwill also create the conditions for their psy-chological well-being. This step may leadon to the initiation and planning of the sec-ond phase.


10 Karen Gallas, Arts as epistemology: enablingchildren to know what they know, in: M.R.Goldberg and A. Phillips, eds., Arts as education,Harvard educational review (Cambridge, MA),p. 26-28. (Reprint series no. 24.)

11 D.Pratt and E.C. Short, Curriculum management,in: T. Husén and T.N. Postlethwaite, eds., Theinternational encyclopedia of education, vol. 3,p. 1322–23, London, New York, Pergamon,1994.

The advantages of pre-packagedmaterials in complex emergencies are:• they can provide the first building

block to initiate the educationalresponse in a systematic fashion(identification of monitors andteachers as well as future schoolchil-dren through readily available recre-ation and non-formal responses);

• pre-packing can provide the educa-tion sector, like other sectors, witha systematic capacity for prepared-ness and unit costing. By stockpil-ing these operational kits, UNHCR,UNESCO and UNICEF have providedcommunity services officers, pro-gramme officers and NGOs workingat camp-level in refugee affectedand IDP areas with adequate materi-als and management tools for arapid response in the educationsector.

The actual components of the recreationalkit—also referred to as ‘RECREATE’—sug-gested for early recreational and non-for-mal educational activities are shown inFigure 1 and Table 3.

I.3.2. PRODUCTION OF THE KIT ‘RECREATE’

A standard kit, associated with a standardteacher/animator/social worker/instruc-tor’s guide, can be produced in an esti-mated period of four weeks consideringlocal and cultural adaptation. Local variations and customs (songs, folklore,dances, story-telling, amongst otherthings) can be adapted and/or added tothe programme.

A kit was developed in Rwanda withan instructor’s guide in French andKinyarwanda.12 Local adaptation to theRwandan culture was carried out by the local NGO based in Kigali, with thetechnical and financial support ofUNICEF.

Stockpiling, anticipation, and/or thedevelopment of a regional capacity afterproduction of RECREATE is feasible. Thebasic kit consists of a resource box ofsports and other recreational trainingmaterials for approximately 80 to 160 chil-dren. There are usually two to four instruc-tors working with a group of forty childrenat a time.


TABLE 3.Components of therecreational kit suitable forapproximatelyeighty children

12 Centre de Jeunes Gatenga-MINITRASO, Éduca-tion par le jeu : guide de l’ animateur, Kigali,UNICEF, 1996. For a variation of this proposalsee: Pilar Aguilar, Recreational kits for refugees,Geneva, UNHCR, 1998. (PTSS Best practicespaper, no. 4.)

Quantity Items

For the children

10 Skipping-ropes, long20 Skipping-ropes, short2 Volleyballs2 Volleyball nets2 Footballs5 Balls, small10 Tambourines, small20 Flutes, cymbals, rattles,

triangles, etc. (depending on local culture)

1 Drum with drumsticks12 Coloured tabards (to

distinguish a team of players)12 Dance costumes (depending

on local culture)10 Plastic skittles6 Pickets with flags (to mark a

playing area)1 Metal or plastic trunk to contain

the above1 Padlock with keys

For the recreational instructors

1 Registration book (lined, 48 pages, A5)

2 Notebooks (lined, 250 pages, A4)1 Teacher’s guide (in the local

language)12 Pens1 Box of powdered chalk

(to delimit a playing area)2 Handbells2 Whistles2 Pumps2 Puncture repair outfits1 Tape-measure (long)2 Chalk-boards2 Tambourines3 Boxes of chalk (144 sticks each)1 Duffel bag to contain the above1 Padlock with keys

The instructor’s guide (IG) can be usedby teachers in any particular situationand should be adapted to the local reali-ty.The development, translation (if need-ed) and printing of an IG needs to beplanned. The IG may contain games,sports, songs, dances or other forms ofrecreation. A collection of traditionalgames and songs can be compiled quick-ly by a group of teachers or communityworkers. Often, adolescents or commu-nity workers can be trained to assist inthe first phase of the rapid emergencyresponse. (Non-formal teacher’s guideand instructional materials,see p.25.)

Training for the use of the kit is designedto be a practical presentation of the IGand by no means sets out to be exhaus-tive. Creativity and imagination are partof the training process. The duration ofthe training should be at least one day.However,the kit must never be deliveredwithout previous training. It should bekept together and not dispersed for per-sonal benefit, given the risk that it couldbe considered by some teachers as a ‘boxof goodies’.Training through meaningfuland systematic activities will provide theyouth with specific roles to carry out.Adolescents and community workerscan be trained to assist in its use.

Another advantage of the kit is the possibil-ity of using it for different situations (i.e.games, school tournaments, sports compe-titions, physical education), in camps forthe internally displaced, for street children,and in unaccompanied children centres orrehabilitation centres. Once the peak ofthe emergency has passed,the material cancontinue to be part of the regular schoolactivities or normal curriculum. By work-ing through NGOs, teachers and communi-ty workers, the promotion of recreationalactivities can be considered as ‘the firstbuilding block’ for advocating peacebuild-ing initiatives (see page 41).

II.4.Non-formal education

Humanitarian agencies and commu-nities should co-operate to establishnon-formal education on a systemat-ic basis as soon as possible. The con-tent should follow the cultural andlanguage patterns of the beneficia-ries.

This section aims to describe the educa-tional component of the emergencyresponses and analyzes some strategiesthat have recently been used by UNHCR,UNESCO, UNICEF, and other internationalorganizations.

Non-formal education in a humanitariansetting means that pupils learn basic skillsthrough the study of core subjects, but thecourses do not necessarily lead to recog-nized diplomas and certificates. Theinvolvement of humanitarian agencies dur-ing this phase is important since it discour-ages the dissemination of political mes-sages to children and young adults througheducation. ‘Rather, the internationalhumanitarian community, which is supply-ing relief goods and funding, should insiston progressively training teachers to con-vey skills of co-operation, conflict resolu-tion and reconciliation;as well as messagesrelating to health and to environmentalawareness.’

13

II.5.Emergency response teaching kits and materials

Numerous emergency situations over thelast twenty years have resulted in a chal-lenge for field educators to provide an edu-cational response during emergencies.In some situations, agencies have made acollaborative effort. The descriptions of‘emergency response experiences’ in thissection help to illustrate this aspect of therapid educational response strategy.

II.5.1.UNESCO-PEER TEACHEREMERGENCY PACKAGE

The UNESCO-PEER (Programme forEducation for Emergencies andReconstruction) emergency programmedeveloped a Teacher Emergency Package(TEP) in Somalia in 1993. UNESCO-PEERworked in an inter-agency context and


PHOTO: WCC/P. Williams

13 UNHCR, Revised guidelines, op. cit., p. 28.

with other agencies in developing similaremergency projects in Central,Eastern andSouthern Africa.

The TEP or ‘school-in-a-box’ consists of akit of materials and a methodology ofteaching basic literacy and numeracy inthe mother language of the children.

There is a box containing slates, chalk,dusters, exercise books and pencils foreighty students (in two shifts). The teach-er’s bag contains blackboard paint, brushand a tape measure so that teachers can cre-ate a blackboard on a wall or plank of woodif necessary; white and coloured chalk;pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners and feltmarkers;three ‘scrabble sets’of small wood-en blocks so that teachers can create lan-

guage and number games for the children;three cloth charts (alphabet, number andmultiplication), an attendance book, a notebook and the teacher’s guide, which out-lines the teaching methods and the contentof lessons in order to develop literacy andnumeracy (Figure 2 and Table 4, page 18).

The box is designed to cater for approxi-mately eighty refugee children of primaryage in a split-shift class situation.It does nothave a formal graded curriculum but aimsinstead to teach functional literacy andnumeracy. Where Arabic numerals andLatin script are not applicable, local ver-sions should be purchased or created.

One advantage is that, with the box andteachers’bag,the teacher and children may


The teacher’s bagcontains blackboard paint,a brush and a tapemeasure so thatteachers can create a blackboard on a wall …

PH

OTO

: UN

HC

R/E

. Birr

er

FIGURE 2.The contents

of the TEP

TABLE 4.Non-formal educationalresponse as

contained in the TEP

set-up a ‘classroom’ anywhere. The kit cov-ers the literacy and numeracy skills thatshould be developed between the first andfourth grades (approximately) and isdesigned for a six-month span of learningthat then phases into the formal textbook-based curriculum.

The UNESCO team has also developed atraining programme for the implementa-tion of TEPs based on a ‘train-the-trainer’approach.

14The TEP may be procured

from UNESCO-PEER’s office in Somali,Kinyarwanda,Afar, Portuguese, French andEnglish versions. UNESCO-PEER’s currentaddress in Nairobi is: P.O. Box 30592,


Quantity Description

For the children

40 Hard slates80 Slate crayons40 Slate-cleaning cloths80 Exercise books (lined, A4,

96 pages)80 Pencils80 Erasers80 Pencil sharpeners80 Pens (blue ball-point)9 Boxes of chalk (144 sticks each)1 Wooden clock1 Gameboard (depending on

the local culture)1 Metal or plastic trunk to

contain the above1 Padlock and keys

For the teacher

1 Registration/mark book1 Notebook (lined, A5, 96 pages)1 Teacher’s guide (in the local

language)6 Pens (blue ball-point)6 Felt-tipped pens6 Pencils1 Ruler (30cm)3 Erasers3 Pencil sharpeners1 Tape-measure (1.5m)96 Wooden cubes (2cm)1 Box of white chalk (144 stcks)1 Box of assorted coloured

chalk (144 sticks)1 Tin blackboard paint1 Paintbrush1 Duster1 Chalkboard compass1 Chalkboard set-square1 Chalkboard ruler1 Alphabet poster (printed cloth)1 Number poster 1–100

(printed cloth)1 Multiplication table poster

1-10 (printed cloth)1 Map of the home country

(printed cloth)1 Duffel bag to contain the above

14 G. Retamal, D. Mudiappasamy and M. Richmond,UNESCO-PEER: lessons learned in Eastern Africa,Gigiri-Nairobi, UNESCO-PEER, 1995.

UN Complex Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya. The1997 unit cost was approximately US$140.

II.5.2.THE NGARA EXPERIENCE, 1994

As a direct consequence of the 1994Rwanda genocide, population displace-ment across the border was on a massivescale.In twenty-four hours,250,000 peoplecrossed to Rusumo to seek safe-haven inthe United Republic of Tanzania, and over470,000 found their way to the Kageraregion. At the time, it was the largestrefugee population in the world, but soonafterwards the exodus into Eastern Zairewould exceed it in scale. The internationalcommunity was required to mount a mas-sive effort to try and cope with a displacedpopulation of such proportions.15

Close inter-agency collaboration was itsmain and distinctive feature from the out-set. It was probably the only effectivemechanism to address the question ofeducation for refugees. UNHCR, UNICEF,UNESCO-PEER and Deutsche Gesellschaftfür Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)proposed joint support in order to pro-vide an educational programme for thecrowded refugee camps in Ngara. TheGovernment of Tanzania agreed andapproved a Memorandum of Under-standing, and associated sub-agreementswith NGOs, as the basis for the develop-ment of the education sector in the camps. A Memorandum of Understandingdescribes which organization shall beresponsible for providing particularemergency services to critical refugeecamps. In the case that interests us here,the main concern was which relief agen-cy would be responsible for providing aneducation in each camp. The principle of‘education for repatriation’ was adoptedby all agencies concerned and the mainpriority was focused towards primaryeducation.

To further explain the Memorandum ofUnderstanding, UNHCR provided theoverall co-ordination from which theEducation Programme Management Unit(EPMU) was established, comprisingUNESCO-PEER, UNICEF and GTZ.16

Through an Education Co-ordinationCommittee,the EPMU with the communityservices and education NGOs,co-ordinatedthe education programme. At the camp

level, a Rwandan refugee ProjectDevelopment Officer (PDO) wasemployed to supervise the operation of theschools in the camp. Each school had adirector who, with an assistant called the‘responsable’, had the task of managing theschool.

An educational needs assessment wascarried out by UNHCR and UNICEF early inthe emergency; this greatly stimulatedcommunity interest and educational plan-ning. The agencies concerned thenplanned a phased approach with the fol-lowing features:

Recreation: Specifically in the Lumasicamp, it provided an opportunity for chil-dren, teachers and young people to cometogether for an agreed purpose, and toundertake some basic activities for psycho-social well-being and healing. Teamworkand organized activities were part of theprogramme, which also provided someopportunity to plan other parts of the edu-cation programme.

The Teacher Emergency Packagewas adopted to support the first phase ofthe emergency education programme inNgara. Initially, UNESCO-PEER sent 300kits to Ngara in readiness for the openingof schools in the camps. While Rwandanteachers had no familiarity with the pro-posed kit, the TEP had been translated intoKinyarwanda and adapted as necessary by UNESCO-PEER specialists, includingRwandan educators (for more detailedinformation on the contents of the TEP,see opposite).The introduction of the TEPmethodology and teacher training alwayspreceded the distribution of kits.Rwandan teachers regarded it as an incen-tive to resume educational activities. ByApril 1995, in Ngara/Karagwe fortyschools were established in the refugee


15 P. Aguilar and M. Richmond, Emergency educa-tional response in the Rwandan Crisis, in: G.Retamal and R. Aedo-Richmond, eds., Educationas a humanitarian response, London, Cassell,1998.

16 F. Riller, Regional Emergency Education Mission:Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zaire (27 October-24November 1994), Special Unit for Rwanda andBurundi (SURB), Mission Report, December1994.

PHOTO: UNHCR/Betty Press

The TEP in use inRwanda

camps with an enrolment of nearly 60,000students, all using a shift system, i.e. halfthe children attended in the morning andthe other half attended in the afternoon.Children in refugee camps in developingcountries are mainly concentrated in thefirst stages of basic education.

Reintroduction of the curriculum:Delays were experienced in obtaining primary school textbooks, but effortswere made to use duplicated and ad-hoc materials in their absence (seeII.7.3 ‘Set-up a low-cost productionunit’, page 31).

II.5.3.THE UNICEF-UNESCO TEPPROGRAMME IN RWANDA

In July 1994, UNICEF and UNESCO, in theform of its Programme for Education forEmergency and Reconstruction,decided tojoin efforts to set-up a rapid educationalresponse both inside Rwanda and in therefugee camps. The inter-agency collabora-tion had already been initiated in May1994, with the translation and adaptationinto Kinyarwanda of the teacher’s guideand other educational materials containedin the Teacher Emergency Package, that


PH

OTO

: P.W

illiam

s/W

CC

had already been developed by PEER for itsSomali programme.

This early-stage co-operation betweenthe two agencies facilitated the conceptu-alization, development and implementa-tion of emergency education intervention.‘An unusual, perhaps, unique degree ofclose inter-agency collaboration was quick-ly achieved and subsequently sustained,built on team work, shared aims and objec-tives, mutual support, and complementari-ty of roles.’17

The reconstruction of the national educa-tion system started with the implementa-tion of the TEP—or school-in-a-box—as a‘mobile classroom’. The TEP model was, forthe first time, tested on a nation-wide scale.The strategy devised by the UNICEF-UNESCO emergency education program-me, in collaboration with the Ministry offi-cials, was based on a phased approach inorder to re-establish the education system.

The first phase aimed at rebuilding thealmost non-existent infrastructure in orderto re-open schools and start reintegratingteachers and children. UNICEF finally pro-vided 9,000 TEPs to meet the initial needsof nearly 720,000 primary school-children,as well as for the teachers in training. Therewere more than 11,000 teachers trained inthe use of the TEP,which represented about60% of the former primary school teachingforce.

The second phase focused on the normal-ization of the education system in terms ofprovision of textbooks, teacher’s guides,and regular school supplies,plus the recon-stitution of the infrastructure of education-al administration services provided by theministries and the prefectures.

Awareness campaigns (mine awarenessand health messages regarding cholera)were conducted at a prefecture level, withthe participation of teachers, local commu-nity authorities, and so forth. Specificteaching packages in Kinyarwanda formine and cholera awareness were integrat-ed into the basic literacy and numeracycore of TEP.

II.5.4.TRAINING OF TEACHERS INRWANDA,1994–95

In order to re-open the schools,the govern-ment used TEP materials and associatedteacher training (of a two-day duration).

The first day of training included basicteaching theory and a demonstration ofTEP methodology. The second day focusedon practical teaching skills for literacy andnumeracy using the didactic materials ofthe educational activities suggested in theTEP, as well as the teacher’s guide.

A training-of-trainers system was set-upin each of the communities using a ‘cas-cade’ approach, in order to respond to theurgent training needs of Rwandan teach-ers.The cascade approach means that thetrained teachers were required, in theirturn, to train their colleagues.


FIGURE 3.The impact of theTEP in Rwanda

17 Aguilar and Richmond, op. cit.

A core group of twenty-one nationaltrainers, divided into teams of four or five,were sent out to the eleven prefectures.Each commune was represented by twoprimary school-teachers who, in turn,trained the other teachers in their owncommunes.Since it was the first systematicactivity to take place at a community level,the emerging local authorities were pre-sent in all the training sessions, i.e. districtand local supervisors, headmasters, churchrepresentatives and local governmentauthorities. It was particularly noticeablethat less than 10% participating in the train-ing were women teachers.

II.5.5.NON-FORMAL EDUCATIONALRESPONSE

Curricula need to be ‘packaged’ when morethan one artifact is provided. As impliedabove, a minimum package contains some-thing for the student and something for theteacher. More frequently, however, numer-ous other materials are provided. Thesematerials may provide different instruction-al methods, or different individual tasks,and may use different formats and mediafor instruction. For instance, one packagemay provide a student with a text, a work-book, or set of worksheets co-ordinated


FIGURE 4.The training of

teachers inRwanda,1994/95

SCHOOLS SCHOOLS SCHOOLS

CORE GROUP OF TRAINERSCORE GROUP OF TRAINERS

PREFECTURE PREFECTURE PREFECTURE

COMMUNE COMMUNE COMMUNE


with the text, and a teacher’s guide. Moreelaborate multimedia packages and games(with all necessary paraphernalia, boards,tokens, scoring procedures), records, discsfor the microcomputer, films, video,videodiscs, are available for developedcountries. In addition, other componentsmay be included, particularly proceduresfor assessing student progress. Such proce-dures may be as simple as a tracking mecha-nism to monitor where the student is in aset of hierarchically structured materials,perhaps presented on a wall chart.

18

Educational supplies: The main featureof the kit should be its solidity, capacityfor easy stockpiling, and transporta-tion (experience shows that, in the case ofSomali,Afar and Rwandan refugees, educa-tional kits were part of the items that therefugees took care to take back with themwhen they were repatriated). The site ofthe schools may be moved frequently inthe middle of the school programme.Therefore, it is imperative to keep thematerials safely in their box.

Replenishments and/or local supplement-ed materials will be needed urgently andaccording to the kit’s estimated span of use(average of four months). Immediate stepsshould be taken to budget for and to pro-cure the educational materials, books, andequipment specified on page 18.

Afar refugee teachers preparingfor repatriation toDjibouti

Source: Mudipassamy Devadoss and Lois Richards,A scuolaparlando l’Afar, Popoli (Milan), no. 11, November 1997, p. 18–21.

NON-FORMAL EDUCATIONAL RESPONSE

General objective:To provide children with basic literacy, numeracy and life-skills education pendingrestoration of normal schooling.

Specific objectives:• to supply children with basic writing and reading materials in their language of

instruction;• to provide teachers with basic teaching instruments and training;• to strengthen community-based schooling initiatives.

Activities:• to develop, produce/stockpile educational teaching kits and materials;• to identify and/or adapt non-formal educational materials in the teaching language

of the community;• to identify teachers and train them in the use of available materials and teaching aids;• to co-ordinate teachers and NGOs in order to mobilize parents and youth for the

development of basic schooling at community, displaced and refugee camp level.

18 E.L. Baker. Curriculum packages, in: A. Lewy,ed., The international encyclopedia of curricu-lum, Oxford, UK; New York, Pergamon, 1991.


One of 30,000unaccompanied

Rwandan childrentells his story to acounsellor as part

of the traumarecovery

programme

PH

OTO

: UN

ICE

F/B

etty

Pre

ss

EMERGENCY RESPONSE EXPERIENCES

PSYCHO-SOCIAL AWARENESS IN RWANDA.19

In the light of the pervasive levels of trauma exposure, grief reactions and emotional distress inthe aftermath of the genocide, the core group of national trainers participated in a third day oftraining to raise awareness about the impact of psychological trauma among children. This activityfollowed the two-day teacher training that was developed nationally for the introduction of TEP.A six-page training guide20 for understanding basic trauma theory, identification of traumasymptoms in children of different ages, and guidelines for methods of verbal and physicalexpression was provided to the sixty teachers that participated in the initial training. It was expectedthat a core group of these teachers would continue to train other teachers in both the TEPmethodology and trauma awareness at the prefecture level, following a ‘cascade’ approachinto the communes.

From a psycho-social perspective, this trauma intervention was designed to acknowledgethe need to normalize children’s daily life, which was often symbolized by the re-opening of primaryschools, re-establishing previous school routines, and providing educational materials to pupilsand teachers.

19 Article 39 of the CRC statesthat all children have theright to psychologicalrecovery and social reinte-gration in situations ofarmed conflict.

20 M. Raundalen, Introductionto war trauma treatment,Kigali, UNICEF-Rwanda,1994.

II.5.6.NON-FORMAL TEACHER’S GUIDE22

AND INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

The teacher’s guide is a tool for helping theteacher present the curriculum. Usually aguide is designed for use with a specific text-book. Sometimes, however, guides are inde-pendent from the text material and containsufficient background information,activities,questions and lesson plans for teaching limit-ed topics, such as soccer, songs, landmine orcholera and water-borne disease awareness,or environmental issues, etc. A teacher’sguide is not a textbook for students.

Some educationists have aimed at pre-senting an instructional sequence that isboth effective and reproducible.Accordingly, their guides support the ideaof a ‘teacher proof’text by which the teach-er is relegated to making an initial presen-tation of material using pre-specifiedscripts and to monitoring pupil responsesfrom a list of acceptable answers.

Distribution of supplies to childrenunder the supervision of untrained teach-ers in emergency situations will result in

wastage of the equipment and lack ofeffective educational activities. Thus, someform of basic teaching guidelines and relat-ed teaching aids, such as chalkboards,maps,arithmetic and literacy charts,and soforth, should be provided with the non-for-mal kit. The lack of these basic guide-lines and teaching instruments willrender community and camp-levelteacher training purely rhetorical.

The involvement of international educa-tors, in-country educationists and educa-tion authorities, and possibly writers/trans-lators, will normally be appropriate eitherin adapting or developing teacher’s guides



TEP FOR ANGOLA, 1996

UNESCO-PEER and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), in an effort to respond to the educationalneeds of Angolan returnees (returning refugees and displaced persons), devised a TEP programmein collaboration with the Ministry of Education. The TEP for Angola21 programme was built on thelessons learned from the previous Somali and Rwandan experiences. It consisted of a revised andenriched training manual with model lessons in Portuguese and/or national languages (primarilyKikongo), and with practically the same school supplies that composed the earlier TEP emergencyresponse. This non-formal educational programme was addressed basically to children andadolescents in rural communities who had been deprived of access to basic educational servicesand/or had to abandon schooling due to civil war. Many rural communities actively participated inestablishing ‘TEP schools’ in their villages. UNICEF is now participating in this programme in otherregions of the country.

One of the main innovations of the TEP for Angola programme was the in-service teacher trainingthat was expanded to three weeks in order to introduce the enriched teacher’s guide and to meetthe needs of the teachers, many of whom had limited formal education. Another innovation, followingthe success of the NRC-TEP programme in one District of Angola, was when the Ministry of Educationadopted the same methodology in order to provide in-service training to upgrade teachers workingwithin the formal primary education system.

21 UNESCO-PEER/Norwegian Refugee Council,Guia do professor: pacote de emergencia para oprofessor, TEP para Angola, Nairobi, UNESCO-PEER, 1996.

22 J. McNeil, Teacher’s guide, in A. Lewy, ed.,op. cit., p. 81. Also, D. Ball and S. Feiman-Neimser, Using textbooks and teachers’ guides:what beginning elementary teachers learn andwhat they need to know, East Lansing, MI,Michigan Institute for Research on Teaching,Michigan State University, 1986.

FIGURE 5.Suggested

implementationprocedures:

recreational/preparatory and

non-formal educational

intervention in anemergency

situation

and materials. (In the case of refugees, therole of host country educators will vary,depending in whether they are familiarwith the language(s) of study of therefugee community.)

II.6 Implementation procedures,emergency phase education(see Figure 5)

Once the needs assessment is completedand if this information reveals that no condi-tions do exist for implementing formalschooling,the following steps are suggested.

Production, stockpiling and capacity fordistribution of educational kits should be

established. The field manager, in co-ordi-nation with implementing partners,shouldproceed to the identification of potentialteachers among the affected community.Technical advice and training will be nec-essary in order to prepare a programme fordistribution of the recreational kit and non-formal education. After in-service trainingof the identified teachers, the implementa-tion of recreational and the non-formal lit-eracy and numeracy programmes may beinitiated. At this stage supplementary edu-cational packages on landmines, pressinghealth issues, psychological trauma, etc.,could be integrated into the educationalprocess.(See the section on Supplementarysurvival packages,Part III,p.33.)

II.7 Reintroduction of the curriculum

It is highly recommended that school-ing is as much as possible built on thebasis of a core curriculum and educa-tional materials that are familiar tothe teachers and students.

II.7.1.A NORMALIZED CLASSROOM SITUATION

As noted earlier, the improvement of basiceducation is of great importance forUNHCR, UNICEF and UNESCO at all times,regardless of whether affected communi-ties are in the earliest stages of an emergen-cy or in a long-standing asylum situation.Objectives and minimum standards forUNHCR-funded schools23 should be imple-mented in the case of refugees.

This phase refers to a normalized class-room situation, where schools try to oper-ate a normal timetable, incorporating mostschool subjects and using textbooks.Ideally,in refugee situations, the curriculum andlanguage of instruction should be that of


Basic educationalassessment

START

Interagencyfield analysis

Do theconditions existto implement the

formalcurriculum?

Production andstockpiling of

educational materials

Logistical planof distribution

Identify theteachers

Train theteachers

Implementnon-formal basic

education

ImplementSupplementary survival

packages (page 33)

Go to Figure 6,page 31

‘School-in-a-box’

‘Recreate’

‘Supplementarysurvival

packages’

KEY:

Decisions

Activities

Kits

NO

YES

23 UNHCR, Review of UNHCR’s refugee educationactivities, Geneva, Inspection and EvaluationService, June 1997, p. 13. A draft proposal forthese standards is at present being consideredfor a revised version of the UNHCR emergencyhandbook.

the refugees’ country or area of origin.Sometimes this is not the case and refugeeshave to follow the curriculum of the hostcountry,e.g.Sudanese refugees in NorthernUganda and Kenya. Experience shows thatin some situations where refugee childrenwere forced to follow the country of asy-lum curriculum, it resulted in negative con-sequences for their future integration backinto regular schools and educational devel-opment. For example, Mozambican refugeechildren who followed the national syl-labuses of Swaziland, Zambia and Tanzania,had to learn Portuguese in order to resumeschooling in Mozambique.Similarly, the useof the Sudanese curriculum for Eritrean andTigrean refugee children in Eastern Sudanlimited the participation of refugee chil-dren in UNHCR funded-schools and,indeed, a parallel non-formal system in themother-tongue was established by therefugees themselves.

II.7.2.VARIOUS EXPERIENCES

In addition, specific topics that are essen-tial to the question of education in order toraise awareness among children and par-ents victims of armed conflicts are beingconsidered as pilot programmes in Kenyaand the Republic of Kyrgyztan:• Reference is made to the Environmental

Education Programme that is part of apilot project in Kenya (REEPP-Kenya).24

Three pupil-books, levels 1, 2 and 3, and ateacher’s guide have been developed aspart of the on-going Kenyan school cur-riculum in association with UNESCO-PEER.

• Peace Education Programme. A teach-er’s resource book has recently beendrafted to introduce or reinforce con-cepts related to peace education. Theprogramme aims to be part of the normalschool curriculum, and after-school orenrichment activities.25

• Education for Tolerance. In theRepublic of Kyrgyzstan the ToleranceEducation Programme was developedand funded by UNHCR with full supportof the Government.26 A teacher’s guideand four storybooks, plus a general intro-duction to the teaching of tolerance,havebeen produced as part of a series ofbooks.The programme is used with stu-dents from Grade 6 and above.

• Special reference should be made to theMOE Angola/UNESCO project Aprenderde maos dadas. This programme aims atcreating capacity at the school level ofintegrated classes that can provideequal opportunity of access to vulnerablechildren who were victims of the long-term civil conflict of Angola. It is estimat-ed that more than half a million died asthe result of the conflict.As the result ofwar, UNESCO estimates that another halfmillion suffer from different deficiencies.


… a parallel non-formal system inthe mother-tonguewas established bythe refugees themselves.

PH

OTO

: P. W

illiam

s/W

CC

24 UNHCR, Refugee Environmental Education PilotProject in Kenya (REEPP-KENYA), April 1997.Also, UNESCO-PEER/UNHCR, Environmentaleducation programme teacher’s guide, Nairobi,1996.

25 Pamela Baxter, Teacher’s resource book for peaceeducation programme, draft, UNHCR, Nairobi,1998.

26 Simon Jenkins, Teachers’ guide for the teachingof tolerance, UNHCR-Kyrgyz, 1996.

‘At present,’ as Boubacar Camara says,‘unaccompanied children,orphans,minorswith physical and sensorial handicap orchildren suffering diverse traumatisms, arein urgent need of a multiple assistance;especially in relation to rehabilitation andintegration.’27

This pilot project is developing an inte-grated approach to education.The promo-tion of educational opportunities for therehabilitation of vulnerable children isdirectly linked to the achievement of thefollowing objectives:• To put at the disposal of the education sys-

tem adequate educational instruments forintegrated special educational activities.

• To reinforce the national capacity fortraining and management in aspects con-cerning special educational needs.

• To promote local and community basedrehabilitation initiatives in favour of chil-dren victims of war.


A blind boy uses aBraille typewriter in

an integrated classroom in Angola

A normalized classroom situation

PH

OTO

: UN

ICE

F/A

. Gra

cian

o

27 Boubacar Camara, Necessidades educativas espe-ciais em Angola, Dakar, UNESCO/BREDA, 1998.



SOMALIA: REINTRODUCTION OF THE CURRICULUM, 1993-95

By 1990, probably the most successful of the past Somali educational efforts was the development ofa curriculum for basic education and the design, production, and publication of textbooks, and relatedteacher’s guides by the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), Mogadishu. This Centre became thede facto curriculum development department of the Ministry of Education, operating with financialautonomy made possible by the permanent support of external sources.

At that time, the World Bank estimated that, in order to cover the needs of the basic educationenrolment, a total of 2.6 million textbooks and 100,000 teacher’s guides had to be produced within aperiod of five years. Just for the delivery of the first batch of about 300,000 textbooks in 1990, a budgetaryallocation of US$1,139,600 was sought.

The teaching materials developed by the CDC had virtually disappeared during the civil war. Theacquisition of existing textbooks and teacher’s guides has been a protracted and expensive exercise.UNESCO staff recall fights with merchants in Mogadishu’s Bakara market to recover textbooks whosepages were being used to wrap goods.

Since February 1993, a team of ex-CDC writers and designers began to work on the recoveredtextbooks/teacher’s guides in the PEER Educational Development Centres (EDCs). A set of twenty-fivetitles and related teacher’s guides, covering the syllabus of grades 1-4, have been re-edited and, insome cases, re-written. The editing consisted of correcting obvious errors, removing political referencesin deference to the changed and sensitive political context, and, where needed, writing completepages. As many as ten teacher’s guides could not be recovered and had to be rewritten. The layoutwas done anew in an attractive and handy A5 size for all textbooks.

A consortium for developing a partnership with seven NGOs, UNICEF and UNHCR working inSomalia and in the Somali refugee camps in the region was established under the technical supervisionof UNESCO-PEER. After an initial print of 152,000 textbooks, several revisions were adopted andcurrently a fourth printing is in progress, which is totally financed by the European Commission-Somalia Unit. This printing includes not only textbooks for Somalia, but also textbooks specially editedfor use in Northwest Somalia.

Although syllabi existed for Grade 5, textbooks and teachers’ guides were non-existent and had tobe written anew, with the exception of the environmental education textbook and teacher’s guide whichwere recovered. Currently, PEER is preparing these 5th grade materials for press, and as no textbooksand teachers’ guides exist for higher grades, a co-ordinated and systematic writing of them is beingcarried out in each of the EDCs. Textbook writing workshops are conducted in different parts of thecountry. As there is no textbook authority or curriculum development centre likely to come into existencesoon, UNESCO-PEER and UNICEF are the agencies in Somalia that can co-ordinate these activities.Unlike the textbooks that had to be printed in bulk using offset printing facilities abroad, teacher’s guideshave always been printed on demand, a few hundred copies at a time, in the low-cost printing facilitythat is part of the EDCs in Mogadishu, Baidoa and Hargeisa. In addition to textbooks and teachers’guides, Somali storybooks for children have been jointly published by UNESCO-Somalia and Longmanfor use in schools and in non-formal educational situations.

The teaching of English for which, understandably, there is a great demand in Somalia, called forthe production of textbooks. A set of English primers has been developed especially for Somalia. Foruse by SOMOLU teacher trainees and students at the secondary level, English textbooks that wereprepared for Somali schools by the erstwhile Ministry of Education have been published by PEER.

The textbooks printed so far could only be distributed following a 1:6 textbooks/students ratio.Efforts are being made to increase the supply of textbooks and arrive at a more educationally acceptabledistribution ratio of one complete set per two children in 1996. Schools have boxes to store the textbooksovernight and issue them during class hours.

The pilot experience has developed a ‘trainthe trainers kit’28 that provides basic instru-ments for training teachers in the task ofcreating the integrated approach in theteacher-training school’s pilot integratedclassrooms.The kit includes:a model teach-er’s guide, a video and a book describingthe aims and first practical results of theproject, as well as follow-up instrumentsfor the students. There are also other mate-rials to be used by a team of Professores-animadores itinerantes. Their role is totrain teachers and promote the integratedapproach in selected schools at the urbanand rural levels.

Other experiences that require someform of structured curriculum developedfor groups with special needs outside therefugee and humanitarian educationalsphere may serve as models for planningand implementing the educational pro-gramme in complex humanitarian inter-ventions.

Among these are: the mobile tent schoolin the Philippines,29 the Kejar or catch-upstrategy in Indonesia, or specific Child-to-Child experiences such as the Malvaniproject in Bombay and the experiences ofBotswana and Zambia.30 Furthermore, overthe last three decades, package innovativeapproaches have been developed and tested in different cultural environments at country level, such as IMPACT and theBangladesh Rural Advancement Com-mittee in Asia, Escuela Nueva in LatinAmerica and ZINTECH in Africa. Whilethere is considerable value in taking stockof these established experiences and pack-ages, there are a number of reasons whythey cannot be strictly imitated. Forinstance, they are culturally specific, theywere created under special historical cir-cumstances, and they all require new andinnovative materials that demand medium-to long-term curriculum development andteacher-training strategies.31

II.7.3. SUGGESTED IMPLEMENTINGPROCEDURES FORREINTRODUCING THECURRICULUM

Before commencing the assessment ofbasic educational needs of refugee or IDPcommunities, an appropriate implement-ing partner or partners (IP) should be iden-

tified.The role of the IP is primarily to facil-itate communities in organizing and man-aging their own schools. A step-by-stepflow chart is included to suggest a system-atic task-oriented process based mainly onexperiences implemented in Ngara, inRwanda, in Somalia, in Somali refugeecamps and elsewhere (Figure 6).

It should be noted that this processmust be considered only as a suggest-ed guide and by no means constitutesa definite model. While each situa-tion is unique, experience revealsthat some general characteristics arerepeated.

The following checklist, that could takethe form of a questionnaire, should be cov-ered for the initial assessment of basic edu-cation needs:• Number of school-age children (6-18)

requiring to be enrolled in basic educa-tion (boys;girls; total). In case the capac-ity of the school(s) will not initially satis-fy the demand, consider how best toselect the children who will be admittedfirst. Explore the possibility of doubleshifts.

• Classrooms: If necessary, locate sites forrefugee/IDP schools and procure emer-gency construction materials. Involve thecommunity on clearing sites and con-struction. Consider the possibility ofadding temporary classrooms onto exist-ing schools to accommodate refugee chil-dren where possible. Assess stockpilecapacity of tented schools (see Part IV).

• Teachers: Identify number of teachers(qualified, non-qualified, gender, num-bers). Remember to ensure the recruit-ment of female teachers—50% if possi-ble—with a female headteacher ordeputy headteacher in each school.


PHOTO: UNHCR/M. Chevallaz

28 UNESCO/BREDA, Kit pedagogico para educacãointegrada. Project 534/ANG/10, Luanda, 1998.

29 A. Mahinda Ranaweera, Non-conventionalapproaches to education in the primary level,Hamburg, UNESCO Institute for Education, 1989.(UIE Monographs, no. 14.)

30 H. Hawes, Child-to-child, another path to learn-ing, Hamburg, UNESCO Institute for Education,1988. (UIE Monographs, no. 13.)

31 W.K. Cummings and F.P. Dall, Implementingquality primary education for countries in tran-sition, Amman, UNICEF-MENARO, Al KutbaPublishers, 1995.

• Depending on the situation,other ques-tions may be considered, i.e. illiteracyof parents; existing skills within the com-munity (carpentry,masonry, sewing,etc.)and so forth.

• When the curricular materials are notreadily available, it is necessary to recov-er a set of textbooks and teacher’sguides. Some places to start looking are:within the refugee or local community,among teachers, parents or women’sgroups. This is relevant for futurereprinting of materials, if it is not possi-ble to purchase them from the Ministryof Education.

• Set-up a low-cost production unit.The device of a production capacity unitunder the responsibility of an IP appearsas a vital tool for the reproduction ofeducational materials, i.e. textbooks,posters,brochures, leaflets, teacher train-ing materials, and so forth. It can also beused for the production of materials forother sectors, such as health campaigns,nutrition, water and sanitation, hygiene,etc. The Ngara experience developed asimilar capacity revealing that the pro-duction unit becomes cost-effectivewhen it serves other sectors. Also, inorder to make this production unit oper-ational, infrastructure and personnel willbe needed (see box, page 32). All educa-tion programmes will require somematerials production capacity of thiskind.

• When home country materials are avail-able, there may be a need for revision oftextbooks, to be carefully carried out bya group of specialists. There may be aneed to revise the contents of text-books and teacher’s guides, leavingout politically sensitive contents orpossibly illustrations that may notbe acceptable to the educationalauthorities in the country of asylum(e.g. maps, etc.) or to the refugeesthemselves. The same applies to IDPcommunities. In the case where theoriginal teacher-training materials can-not be found,new ones should be devel-oped. UN and NGO management shouldreview the scope for co-operation withthe educational authorities in the coun-try of origin regarding the refugee cases.

• Upgrade the supervisory and evaluationnetwork at camp or community level.

A distribution system should also be cre-ated for the allotment of textbooks,teachers’guides and other materials.

• Recognition of studies undertaken inthe country/area of asylum need to benegotiated on behalf of the refugee com-munity with the Ministry of Educationof the country of origin for eventualrepatriation.


FIGURE 6.Suggested implementing procedures for reintroducing thecurriculum

Basic educationalassessment

(see text)

Purchasematerials

from homecountry/area and

distribute

Set-up TeacherTraining Unit for

community teachers

(where applicable)

ImplementTeacherTraining

Programme

Upgradeadvisory andsupervisorynetwork at

community level

Create distributionsystem for textbooks,

teacher guides andsupplementary

materials

Implementschool

programme

Reproducematerials atlocal level

Generatesupplementary

materials

Recover one setof textbooksand teacher

guides

Set-up aproduction

capacity unit(Implementing

Partnerresponsible)

UNHCR/UNICEF/UNESCONegotiate

recognition withMOE country/area

of origin

Assessmentof

documentation

Textbooksand teacher's

guides

Locallyproduced textbooks,teacher guides and

supplementarymaterials

Teacher TrainingProgramme

Areacurricularmaterials

from homecountry/area

readilyavailable?

Key: documents decision activity/process

NO

YES


SUGGESTED PROTOTYPE PRODUCTION UNIT

Essential equipment:*• Copy-printer (Gestetner) with a production capacity of 120 pages per minute. Current

cost: = US$4,800;• Desktop editing capacity (one computer, one scanner and one printer). This can be

connected on line with the copy-printer. Current cost: US$3,000 to 4,000;• Consumables (paper, ink cartridges, etc.);• Photocopier (small sturdy Gestetner);• Generator (5-8 kva), US$5,000;• Personnel to run the Production Unit: 1 production manager;1 machine operator;

1 graphic designer; 1 secretary (with good knowledge of English and/or French, asrequired, as well as his/her mother language).

Usually the firm that sells the products also provides the training for operating theequipment. The reason that Gestetner is suggested is because of its proven reliability insimilar operations. The Production Unit personnel can be trained by one specialist familiarwith the scheme.

* The stated costs are based on 1997 estimates from the UNICEF-Supply Unit inCopenhagen.

PHOTO: UNHCR/R. Chalasani

For eventual repatriation:

Rwandan refugeesreturn home

Around the basic core of non-formalresponses (RECREATE and REDUCARE),important subjects or ‘emergency themes’are crucial in order to heighten awarenessof the affected populations and especiallyfor the children and youth who have beenvictims of armed conflicts. The researchand assessment of these ‘generativethemes’ are an important part of the dia-logue between the educators and the pop-ulations affected by the humanitarian cri-sis. These contents constitute thefoundation for developing a basic safetynet of knowledge and understandingfor these populations that are confrontedwith extreme situations, and the dailythreat of landmines, cholera, water-bornediseases, and/or the degradation of theenvironment. These ‘themes’, as PauloFreire called them, link the message withthe actual condition of and the causes thatcreated the humanitarian crisis. They arethe concrete ‘hinges’ for opening the doortowards a more complex reflection aboutpeace and reconciliation.

In the words of Paulo Freire:

If the educational programme is dialogical, theteachers also have the right to participate byincluding themes not previously suggested (bythe affected population). I call the latter typeof theme ‘hinged themes’, owing to their func-tion. They may either facilitate the connectionbetween two themes in the programme unit,filling a possible gap between the two; or theymay illustrate the relations between the gener-al programme content and the view of theworld held by the people.1

The theme of becoming aware about thehorror of war, the desire for peace and rec-onciliation, can be ‘generated’ from theactive realization of the perils left by theseconfrontations, such as land mines,cholera, famine,HIV/AIDS,etc.

III.1 Mine-awareness education

The United Nations estimates that over 3million landmines have been laid in Bosniaand Herzegovina (hereafter referred to asBosnia) during the four-year civil war. The

expensive, time-consuming and dangerousprocess of demining has already begun.However, now that the conflict has endedthere still exists a dire need for land-mineawareness, to help protect the population.The legacy of landmines continues longafter the peace accords have been signed.They lie and wait for their victims—unableto discriminate between a soldier on a mili-tary mission, a farmer harvesting his crops,or a child at play.

Statistics from other countries demon-strate that landmines pose an extremepost-conflict danger. For example, inCambodia, one person out of 236 hasbeen mutilated by this type of weapon; inAngola, 1 out of 470; in the northern partof Somalia, 1 in 1,000; and in Viet Nam, 1in 2,800. Bosnia has one of the densestmine distributions in the world—over100 land mines deployed per square kilo-meter. The potential devastation causedby mines in Bosnia could be similar to orworse than the situations in Cambodiaand Angola.

Aside from the solution of long-termdemining, the short- and medium-termefforts must focus on mine-awarenesseducation—targeting the most signifi-cantly affected groups.This requires a spe-cial effort to develop better and moreeffective educational programmes.

Children are the most unprotected vic-tims of land mines.Their natural curiosityand love of play in open areas leaves themhighly vulnerable to mines. Children areless likely to survive a mine explosionbecause they are usually closer to thecentre of the blast, and their small bodiescannot survive the loss of blood. Over50% of mine victims die from the blast,

33

III. Supplementarysurvival packages

1 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed, London,Pelican Books, 1985, p. 92 Also see the concept‘generative themes’. In Freire’s words: ‘I havetermed these themes “generative” because (how-ever they are comprehended and whateveraction they may evoke) they contain the possi-bility of unfolding into again as many themes,which in their turn call for new tasks to be ful-filled.’

FIGURE 7.Emergency

themes developedfrom the basic

core

while the rest are permanently and/or sig-nificantly disabled. Building a healthypost-conflict society necessitates equip-ping its youngest members with theessential knowledge of how to live safelyamongst mines.

Some of the earliest programmes thatteach mine-awareness education weredeveloped by the International Rescue

Committee, the University of Nebraska, andother cross-border agencies operating inPakistan/Afghanistan, in the late 1980s. Thecurriculum formulated for the land mine-awareness programme (LMAP) was basedon information collected from question-naires and from conversations with dem-iners working in Afghanistan. Educationalkits were produced, along with cloth

34 Supplementary survival packages

Healthpractices

Peace andreconciliationprogramme

Environmentalawareness

HIV/AIDSprogramme

Choleraawareness

Land-mineawareness

Otherprogrammes

RECREATIONAL,LITERACY

AND NUMERACYKITS

posters showing the different types ofmines most frequently found in Afghanistan.

A similar programme, based on theAfghan one, was introduced into refugeecamps on the Thai/Cambodian border in1990. Once again, a questionnaire wasdeveloped and used to collect informationto help structure the curriculum for aLMAP. The questionnaire was specificallyadapted to the Cambodian context.Additional questions were inserted relatingto more technical, mine-related matters,such as identifying and avoiding landmines. As a result of the responses from thequestionnaire,changes in the programme’sdesign were made, thus leading to a flexi-ble LMAP and curriculum.

As the full extent and horror of the minecrisis in Cambodia were recognized, itbecame increasingly evident that there wasan urgent need to provide mine-awarenesseducation and that it was essential to havea well-developed curriculum to deliversuch a programme. By 1994, three organi-zations operating in Cambodia began usingthe same curriculum and mobile trainingteams to teach mine-awareness education.

Several problems were identified andlessons learned from experiences withearly LMAPs:• Early programmes tended to focus more

on technical information:— the physical dangers posed by mines;— types of areas where mines were most

likely to be found;— identification of mines;— indicators of the presence of mines;— mine avoidance techniques;and— what to do in a mined area.• Programmes were not community

based.Often,LMAP educators went intoa community, presented their material(with little or no input from the commu-nity) and left.

• Curricula were neither interactive, norage and/or gender appropriate.

• There was (and still is to some extenttoday) a lack of co-ordination and shar-ing of information amongst agenciesand organizations working in this area.

• In some countries, there is still a needfor programmes to be more culturallysensitive and adaptive or flexible, if theyare to be effective.

• Regular and ongoing monitoring andevaluation of LMAPs have not been car-

ried out. So, although it is well estab-lished that many people have hadaccess to programmes, it is very diffi-cult—if not impossible—to assess thesuccess and impact of the programmes.

Traditionally, teaching mine awareness inschools has been complicated by rigidlyimposed syllabi. In order to implementthe lesson plans in a shorter time periodthe information had to be condensed.While this approach added another sub-ject to an overcrowded syllabus, it wasshort, and often was linked to the coun-try’s demining operations. Thus, mineawareness was integrated with local demi-ning operations and not into the schoolsystem—still the case for most LMAPsaround the world.This is partly attributedto the fact that LMAPs are usually con-ceived and developed by those who knowthe most about mines—deminers, andthose who deal with mine victims, such asmedical personnel. Only recently havenational governments accepted thatmines will not be cleared quickly and thatthere is a need to address this long-termproblem.

35Supplementary survival packages

An illustration fromthe Somali mine-awareness package

Taking into consideration the above-mentioned concerns,UNESCO designed,inco-ordination with the United NationsHigh Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)in Somalia, and the United NationsChildren’s Fund (UNICEF) in Rwanda, amine-awareness campaign (MAC) whichhas been used in both Somalia andRwanda. This campaign utilizes a non-for-mal methodology aimed at schools andyoung people in their community. TheMAC consists of an instructional packagethat facilitates the training of teachers, aswell as a video for public education, and a‘road show’ in order to bring the educa-

tional message to remote, hard-to-reachareas that do not receive the school-basedmessage. Building on these successful pro-grammes, UNESCO/IBE (in co-ordinationwith UNHCR and UNICEF) designed amine-awareness education package (MAEP)to meet the need for mine awareness inBosnia.2

An inter-agency strategy for mine-aware-ness education must promote the idea thatschools have a responsibility to teach chil-



MINE-AWARENESS IN AFGHANISTAN

Many schools in Afghanistan have been affected by landmines. Some school areas have been cleared,while others remain mined. In the Afghan capital of Kabul, twenty-five schools were heavily mined.Students could not attend these schools in fear that one wrong step might kill them. However, mostof these schools were cleared by the deminers of the Afghan Mine Action Programme during 1996and 1997. As a result, students in Kabul city are now being taught how to avoid mine incidents inthese schools.

Still, there are other schools in Afghanistan that are in need of demining. Here are a few we haveidentified for this project:

Sufikarim Primary School is located in Pakita province (eastern Afghanistan) but is presentlyclosed due to mines and destruction of the premises. This school used to provide an education tochildren from three villages (each with about 300 people). The school is surrounded by 26,000 sq.m.of minefield, which poses a major risk to the children. One demining team could clear this area inapproximately one month.

Alikhiel Secondary School is also located in Pakita province (eastern Afghanistan) and has some250 students. Children attending classes range from 5-16 years old. One-third of these are in the 7-10 age group and are usually accompanied at school by their older brothers and sisters. Located ontwo sides of the school are approximately 14,000 sq.m. of anti-personnel minefield, hence posing amajor risk to the children. Several children have already fallen victim to the ever-present menaceof mines. Demining teams have recently cleared a footpath to the school. Further work should becarried out by one demining team in the near future.

Sikander Khiel High School is also located in Pakita province (eastern Afghanistan) but is presentlyclosed due to mines and destruction of the premises. The school used to provide education to some500 children from 400 families in the area. The school has some 2,500 sq.m. of minefield in andaround it. One demining team could clear the area in approximately one month.

SOURCE: [email protected]

2 Retamal and Aedo Richmond, op. cit., chapters 9and 13.

dren mine-awareness education. This con-stitutes a basic indication of interest in thepreparation of a formal or non-formalhumanitarian curriculum. By remindingthe post-war generation of the daily horrorthat mines represent, we are reproducingthe values of peace and reconciliation.

Thus, important initiatives have beencreated in order to serve as a basis forlaunching a more permanent process ofinformation and research in the area ofmine-awareness education.

UNICEF/EMOPS’ efforts remain as thebest available and updated database.UNESCO/IBE has prepared an importantpublication reflecting the state-of-the artin mine awareness education.3 This pro-ject is also an ongoing process which isreflected in the Global InformationNetwork in Education (GINIE), at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. GINIE provideson-line access to educational materialsused or in use, under the premise thatlessons learned under one set of condi-tions may inform others.The home-pageon mine-awareness education, devel-oped jointly with the IBE, is now a fullydeveloped network of practitioners inthe area of mine-awareness education, aswell as a dynamic repository of mine-awareness materials from around theworld. Future contributions and ongoingresearch will be reflected on theInternet home page maintained byGINIE.4

III.2 Cholera awareness andwaterborne diseases

In many humanitarian crisis settings, theprovision of clean accessible water andideal sanitation facilities are not within thecommunity’s reach. Waterborne diseases,especially cholera, a bacterial infectioncausing diarrhoea and dehydration, consti-tute by far as the main killers in refugeeand IDP situations. Nevertheless, refugee


KEY POINTS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION ABOUT CHOLERA

To prevent cholera:

- drink only water from a safe source or water that has been disinfected;- cook food or reheat it thoroughly, and eat it while it is hot;- avoid uncooked food unless it can be peeled;- wash your hands after any contact with excreta and before preparing or eating food;- dispose of human excreta promptly.

Remember:

- with proper treatment cholera is not fatal;- take patients with suspected cholera immediately to a health worker for treatment;- increase the quantities of fluids given to patients;- cholera vaccination is not effective.

3 United Nations Children’s Fund, Children andanti-personnel land mines, New York, UNICEF,Office of Emergency Programmes (EMOPS), n.d.(Published as an on-going database.) A series ofsheets outlining the world-wide crisis of landmines, UNICEF’s stance and advocacy for a totalban on the production, use, stockpiling, sale andexport of anti-personnel landmines. It alsoincludes country specific information onUNICEF’s programmes in landmine awarenesseducation. Available from: UNICEF, UnitedNations Department of Humanitarian Affairs(DHA), or the International Committee of theRed Cross. Also see: P. Baxter, J. Fisher, andG. Retamal, Mine-awareness education, Geneva,International Bureau of Education/UNESCO,1997. (Available in English, French and Spanish.)

4 GINIE (University of Pittsburgh), Home page formine-awareness education. An open forum andpoint of educational exchange on issues relatedto developing LMAPs. Any interested reader cancontribute and participate. For further informa-tion, contact: Prof. Maureen McClure, Director,GINIE, School of Education, Institute forInternational Studies in Education, University ofPittsburgh, 5K01 Forbes Quadrangle, Pittsburgh,PA 15260, USA.Internet: http://www.pitt.edu/~ginie/lm

An anti-choleraposter

and other affected communities and indi-viduals can still adopt improved hygienebehaviours, which can lead to betterhealth. They can also work gradually toimprove their sanitation and water facili-ties. The population’s level of health can-not improve unless those affected bycholera are treated. Education for aware-ness means helping individuals, familiesand communities become aware of thelinks between poor hygiene and disease. Italso means encouraging and helping peo-ple to improve those attitudes which,when changed, will lead to a reduction indisease. Hygiene education will assisthouseholds and communities in discover-

ing ways to design and construct their ownfacilities, in order to improve and rebuildtheir community, thus keeping the mostimportant factor of disturbance and fearunder relative control.5

It is not sufficient simply to providehygiene education and then expect a com-munity to accept and use the sanitationtechnology provided. This should be thefirst element in informed decision-makingand empowerment by the communitiesthemselves, in order to tackle the causes ofcholera and other diarrhoeal diseases.Thiswill involve giving the community oppor-tunities to participate in decision-making,particularly the selection of the sanitationtechnologies that are most appropriate totheir cultural customs and to their actualdaily realities.

III.2.1. PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF ANOUTBREAK

People contract cholera from drinkingwater or eating food contaminated withcholera. Prevention is based on reducingthe chances of ingesting vibrios. Whencholera appears in a community, effortsmust be intensified in order to promotesanitary disposal of human waste, the pro-visions of safe water, and to ensure safepractices in handling food.

Health education is the key to publicawareness and co-operation. The quickestway to control an outbreak is to mobilizethe people in order to help limit its spread.Experienced teachers,community workersand health educators therefore play animportant role in epidemic control.Community and service organizations canalso be useful in disseminating health mes-sages through their programmes.

It is particularly important to inform peo-ple that, in most cases,cholera can be treat-ed with simple measures; vaccinations arenot effective. There is no substitute fordrinking only safe water, practising goodpersonal hygiene, and making sure thatfood is properly prepared.6


5 World Health Organization, Fact sheet—Environmental sanitation: cholera and otherepidemic diarrhoeal diseases control, Geneva,WHO/EOS, 1996.

6 World Health Organization, Guidelines for choleracontrol, Geneva, 1993, p. 24.

III.3.Environmental awareness8

Refugees, returnees, IDPs and populationsvictimized by war suffer greatly from theenvironmental damage to their surround-ings. They endure threats to their healthfrom chemical and faecal contamination ofwater, soil and air, as well as overcrowding,dust and smoke. The effects of environ-mental degradation harm women and chil-dren disproportionately, particularly thoseeffects connected with gathering of woodfor fuel. Women and children must spendlong hours seeking and carrying wood,entailing increased exposure to assault. Asa result, children are also forced to missschool. As fuel supplies becomes harder toobtain,cooking time may be shortened andwater not boiled, thus leading to increasedincidences of diseases. Furthermore,refugee families may also be forced to sellpart of their food rations to obtain the fuelneeded to cook their meals, resulting inmalnutrition.

Conflicts between refugees, returnees,IDPs, and national communities over natu-ral resources are a major source of social,political and economic turmoil. Anothercause of long-term economic hardship isthe deforestation of natural vegetation anddepletion of water resources, which thencauses deterioration of pasture and agricul-tural land. Refugees may have begun toplay a positive role in the local economies,but it also happens that their presencetotally disrupts the local patterns of eco-

nomic activity. The huge economic cost ofsuch destruction often goes unrecorded.

In the context of the population affectedby humanitarian crises, the most practicalformulation defines environmental educa-tion as:

a permanent process in which individuals gainawareness of their environment and acquirethe knowledge, values, skills, experiences,and also the determination which will enable


AN ACTION PLAN FOR HYGIENE EDUCATION

Preparation of an action plan for hygiene education includes making the following decisions:

• how the community’s participation will be achieved;• who the education should be directed at;• what the content of the education should be;• what educational methods will be used;• who will carry out the educational activities;• what accompanying social and economic programmes will be needed;• what other field workers or sectors will be involved;• how technologies can be designed in order to make them affordable and acceptable;• how the programme will be managed.7

7 For training the trainers, WHO has developed aseries of materials that are most appropriate forfield programmes related to teachers, health andcommunity workers:

• WHO, Teachers’ guide for basic epidemiology,2nd. ed., Geneva, 1994. (Available in English andFrench.) This manual provides an introduction toprinciples and methods of epidemiology.Starting from an explanation of the causes of dis-ease, with particular emphasis on modifiableenvironmental factors, the authors go on to showhow epidemiology can be applied to the preven-tion of disease and the promotion of health.

• WHO, Teacher’s guide for one-week trainingworkshop: basic environmental epidemiology,Geneva, 1994. This teacher’s guide is intended toempower environmental epidemiologists toorganize and initiate a one-week introductoryworkshop in environmental epidemiology byproviding a framework and suggested teachingapproaches. Recommended for implementingagencies in the field.

8 This section is mainly based on: ChristopherTalbot and Kibe Muigai, Environmental educa-tion for refugees: guidelines, implementationand lessons learned, in: Retamal and AedoRichmond, op. cit.

them to act individually and collectively tosolve present and future environmental prob-lems, as well as to meet their needs withoutcompromising those of future generations.’ 9

There are four fundamentally targeted pop-ulations for environmental educationefforts:• Refugees and internally displaced per-

sons in ‘stable’ situations, where largeinfluxes or massive repatriations are notanticipated;

• Refugees and internally displaced per-sons in emergencies;

• Local host populations;• Returnees: education for the reconstruc-

tion and rehabilitation of war-ravagedenvironments.

III.3.1.OBJECTIVES OF REFUGEE ANDEMERGENCY ENVIRONMENTALEDUCATION

The clearest statement of the global aims ofenvironmental education is contained inthe final report of the firstIntergovernmental Conference onEnvironmental Education, held in 1977, atTbilisi,Georgia,under UNESCO auspices:• To foster clear awareness of,and concern

about,economic,social,political and eco-logical interdependence in urban andrural areas.

• To provide every person with opportuni-ties to acquire the knowledge,values,atti-tudes, commitment and skills needed toprotect and improve the environment.

• To create new patterns of behaviouramong individuals, groups and society asa whole towards the environment.10

After adaptation to the refugee and com-plex emergency context, the aims set outin the Tbilisi final report appropriatelyexpress the objectives of environmentaleducation for refugees, national communi-ties and returnees.

III.3.2.THE SUBJECT MATTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATIONFOR REFUGEES

The seven broad topics outlined below arethe subject matters embodied in most envi-ronmental education programmes forrefugees:• Energy conservation;• Sustainable shelter;• Conservation of trees and other vegeta-

tion;• Soil conservation;• Water conservation;• Environmental health;• Local laws and traditions on natural

resource use.


Three model booklets on

environmental education

9 UNEP/UNESCO/OECD, Paris, 1992, quoted inOusmane Thioune, Environmental educationtechniques suitable for use in rural areas inSenegal, Bradford, UK, University of Bradford,1993, p. 32.

10 Sterling, Stephen, Mapping environmental edu-cation: progress, principles and potential, in:Walter Leal Filho and Joy A. Palmer, eds., Keyissues in environmental education, p. 1-19,Bradford, UK, Horton, 1992.

PHOTO: UNICEF/Betty Press

During 1995, a Pilot Project, incorporatingthe above principles and practices waslaunched in Kenya, with significant‘spillovers’ in Uganda, Ethiopia and theUnited Republic of Tanzania. Thesemethodological proposals have beenimplemented and related materials havebeen developed on the basis of an evalua-tion of the Kenyan pilot project.Furthermore, environmental education ini-tiatives are being extended to Somali,Sudanese and Rwandese refugee settle-ments in Uganda and Ethiopia.11

III.4 Education for peace andreconciliation

Through various experiences, peace edu-cation and reconciliation have developedwith different degrees of success in crisiscountries, some of which are described inthis section. No systematic evaluation hasbeen carried out in order to assess the rele-vance of these experiences and the impactof their methodological approaches. Thisarea remains as an evolving one thatrequires further research and reflection. Abig gap remains between educational prac-titioners working in the field of complexemergencies,and the copious methodolog-ical contributions and curriculum develop-ment initiatives produced in developedcountries on the issue of education, peaceand reconciliation.12

III.4.1. SOMALIA: FROM THE PEACECAMPAIGN TO THE PEACEEDUCATION PACKAGE

The Peace Campaign for Somalia (1994)was conceived as a strategy for stimulatingthe sensitivity of the Somali people aboutthe impact of violence and the gun cultureof Somali society. There was a clear need toprovide alternative images and models towhat had become an idolization andromanticization of the gun, which wasseen as a symbol of machismo andcourage. It was necessary to combat theuse of the gun not only as an instrument ofdealing with conflicts but also as the onlymeans of economic survival for many. Aroad show on the topic of guns called ‘dropthe gun, rebuild the nation’ has beenstaged, and can also be purchased as avideo or cassette tape in English and

Somali. To this end, the following actionplans were conceived and executed:• Production and distribution of ‘Education

for Peace’handbills, cloth posters,T-shirtsand a Somali map;

• Formation of the Education for PeaceCommittee in Mogadishu comprisingUNESCO, UNOSOM 3D (Disarmament,De-mining and Demobilization), UNO-SOM Media Products, Radio SNA (The


A Rwandan boydraws guns during the trauma treatmentprogramme provided byUNICEF

11 UNHCR-UNESCO/PEER. Environmental educa-tion programme, Nairobi, 1996. (The programmeconsists of three pupil books with their corre-sponding teacher’s guides, see opposite.)

12 Shapour Rassekh, Éducation et culture de lapaix : sélection bibliographique mondiale, Paris,UNESCO, 1996. (IBEdata.)

Voice of the People), Radio Ali Mahdi(The North Mogadishu Radio) andMogadishu newspapers;

• An Education for Peace Consultancy cul-minating in a mission report entitled ARoad Show QORIGA DHIG QARANKADHIS (drop the gun, rebuild the nation)by the Mogadishu Print Media;

• Culture of Peace in Somalia symposia/meetings conducted for Somali intellec-tuals in Sana’a (17-20 April 1995), Paris(25-27 October 1996) and Addis Ababa (8-10 June 1996);

• Production of a low-cost video contain-ing peace education songs and,the devel-opment of an Education for Peace



LIBERIA: KUKATONON

After almost six years of armed conflict, a recent agreement has paved the way for peace in Liberia.The Kukatonon (meaning ‘we are one’ in the Kpelle language) Peace Education Project was launchedas a pilot project in fifteen schools, by the Christian Health Association of Liberia (CHAL), with supportfrom UNICEF, in March 1992. The project provides training in conflict resolution for students andasks them to practise their new skills as peer mediators in their schools.

The Kukatonon project was initiated in response to the civil war that had broken out in December1989. More than 850,000 Liberians fled the country. Kukatonon has evolved over the years, maintainingits emphasis in two main areas:• conflict resolution training workshops; and • creative expression through drama, song and dance. The pilot project gathers teams of student leaders to participate in ten-day training programmesconducted by an NGO partner. The course prepares the students to resolve conflicts betweenother students in their schools (peer mediation). During training, they learn to: • handle disagreement, fighting and differences of opinion with a broad range of creative responsesfor resolving conflict;

• understand the causes of conflict and violence; • become familiar with methods for building trust within a community; • strengthen their own and their peers’ self-respect, self-esteem, confidence and sense of responsibility; • practice skills for communication, co-operation and reconciliation; • study and apply the techniques of mediation. Over a six-month period, a total of eighty students were trained, mediation groups were established,and an evaluation set in motion in the schools. At the halfway point, artists and actors selectedadditional students for training in drama and peace theatre, creating ‘cultural troupes’ in each school.

During the years 1992 to 1995 continuing activities were organized based on peace theatreperformances staged in schools by students, and the teacher-training workshops on conflictresolutions, leading to the production of a manual for the training of trainers and the constitution ofstudent palava (conflict) management teams. Also, a training package was developed to assistteachers in integrating the lessons of the Kukatonon training manual into their classrooms.

The manual and the peace awareness workshops were designed to meet important goals, afterwhich full implementation of the programme can commence. The intention was that:• the rate of conflict within schools will drop substantially;• children will be empowered to use their artistic talents to educate their peers, parents andcommunities about peace;

• school and community leaders will be more effective in transmitting the skills and knowledgerequired for the non-violent resolution of conflict;

• individuals will be encouraged to integrate what they have learned into their daily professional andpersonal lives.

Unfortunately, due to the deteriorating political situation, the programme has been discontinued.

Package to be used in formal/non-formaleducation settings comprising songs, sto-ries,activities and games.

III.4.2.THE PEACE EDUCATION PACKAGE(PEP)

The initial objective of the PeaceEducation Package was to introduceSomali children to the concept of non-vio-lent solutions to conflicts. This training isspread over a period of one year, duringwhich time the children can assimilatepeace-related concepts and learn to prac-tice them at home and in the neighbour-hood.To this end,some of the lessons haveexercises that involve the participation ofparents, the family in general and the com-munity at large. For the community, theactivities in the PEP will be a continuedexhortation to stop fighting and to givepeace a chance.

Strategy of implementation and moni-toring: The prototype package in English

and Somali has been field-tested in Jowharand Middle Shabelle, in Somalia. A full-timeEC-Somalia and UNESCO-PEER consultantmade the creation of this package possibleover a period of seven months, with thehelp of part-time writers, graphic artists,typists and others.

In addition to developing this package(which can easily be modified for use inother countries), UNESCO-PEER madeavailable its human and material resourcesin Somalia and in the camps for the imple-mentation of this project. The JesuitRefugee Service (JRS) financed the produc-tion of 400 packages. At a rate of 40 stu-dents per package, a total of 16,000 chil-dren and their parents and communitieshave been reached. As UNICEF and UNDPhave shown an interest in the package,these organizations will also becomeinvolved and contribute towards the pro-duction and dissemination of 1,000 pack-ages, covering a total population of 40,000students.



BURUNDI: BATISSONS LA PAIX/ GIRA AMAHORO

The project was designed to teach, ‘youth to learn the skills they need to resolve their conflicts peacefully,to cope with the stress of violent ethnic conflicts, and to prepare for a less violent future by providingthem a psycho-social support and educational skills.’

This project was launched in October 1994 at 1,500 primary and secondary schools and learningcentres. It was able to reach 100,000 Burundi students with lessons in peace making. The project wasdesigned for either formal or non-formal education. A manual for educators and a book of co-operativelearning activities for students has been developed and distributed to educational counsellors andschool administrators during conflict resolution training workshops.

Social mobilization campaigns, education programmes by radio and correspondence, and othernon-formal education activities take the project beyond the classroom. ‘Let’s Build Peace’ is implementedby the Ministry of Basic Education and Adult Literacy, the Scouts and other NGOs, with support fromthe UNICEF Burundi Emergency Programme.• A Peace Kit: This kit contains thirty different activities including games, working/drawing materials,etc. It teaches the concept of peace to children in all schools and other learning centres who areparticipating in the project. The activities can be integrated into the curriculum in both French andKirundi as art and sport classes. The most important message in this kit is to learn to build and livewith peace.

• A teacher’s guide/activity book for the ‘Batissons la Paix’ programme. This guide gives some ideasof activities to be taught by teachers or trainers. The main objective of education for peace is to letchildren and adults discover and understand the meaning of solidarity, confidence, equality and justice,in order to develop the capacity to respect one another.

• A handbook of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Kirundi. • A handbook of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in French.

III.4.3.THE PEP MATERIALS

• A teacher’s handbook entitled ‘Let PeaceBegin with Me’. This contained activitiesfocused on the role of the individual inbringing about peace, the rights andresponsibilities of children, awareness ofothers as equals,communication,conflictawareness/resolution, peace, justice andtolerance. Each activity includes objec-tives, descriptions, comments and teach-ing aids.

• Abdi’s dream comes true and other sto-ries: This is a booklet containing twentystories, some of which are of Somali ori-gin. Among the values taught are co-oper-ation, friendship and consideration. Eachstory has follow-up activities and com-ments meant to help the teacher guidethe class toward assimilating its moralmeaning.

• Singing for solidarity: This is a bookletwhich features old and new songs that

emphasize learning to live with othersand learning to live together. An audiotape-containing recordings of these songsaccompanies the booklet.

• ‘Word game’: This contains sixty cards,each one with an image and a worddenoting either conflict or peace.On theback of each card, there is a sentenceabout human rights.

• ‘Peace wins the game’: A game ratherlike ‘Snakes and Ladders’ where everypeace-related move is rewarded with anadvance and every non-peace-relatedmove means the player moves back andhas less chance of winning.

• Maps: A world map and a Somalia mapare aids for the lesson entitled ‘A PeacefulWorld’.

• Supplies: Exercise books, materials need-ed for drawing/sketching/colouring,erasers, pencil sharpeners, glue, scissors,rulers and an inflatable globe all neatlypacked in a blue school bag.



MOZAMBIQUE: CIRCO DA PAZ

As years of conflict have left 1 million people dead, communities in Mozambique have committedthemselves to helping educate their children on how to live in lasting peace.

The war, having a massive impact on civilians, forced 1.5 million people to flee to neighbouringcountries and led to approximately 5 million persons becoming internally displaced. The warspecifically affected children by separating hundreds of thousands of them from their families. Manyof the 7 million children under the age of 14 and 1,650,000 under 19 witnessed atrocities or wereforced to commit them, causing widespread psychological trauma.

Peace officially returned on October 1992 and was reinforced by the democratic elections of 1994.Now the country is grappling with the relentless challenge of poverty. Mozambique is one of theworld’s poorest nations. Its GNP in 1994 was estimated at US$ 5.4 billion. More than 70% of the 16.5million people live in absolute poverty, which was made worse by the war and a devastating drought.As many as 80,000 demobilized soldiers face bleak prospects as they search for work. The waralso destroyed more than 3,000 schools, or left them in a dilapidated condition. Many teachers werekilled. In 1995, more than half of school-age children did not have access to a school. Of those enrolled,only 34% completed grade five.

After sixteen years of bloodshed, the people of Mozambique are healing the wounds of war. TheGovernment, UNICEF and other partners are expanding education for peace programmes thatprepare health workers to assist traumatized children and offer vocational training to the disabled.The first initiative of the peace education project was launched in 1993 as an experimental projectknown as Circo da Paz, which was a mobile troupe of trainers who conveyed conflict resolution skillsthrough theatre, art and dance. This experience was similar to the Liberian Kukatonon.

IV.1 Site planning and educational shelter

Existing guidelines for resolving the prob-lem of shelter for victims of humanitariancrisis in complex emergencies suggest thatonly the necessary minimum of time,effortand resources should be committed totemporary emergency shelter. Permanentreconstruction should be promoted assoon as possible. Maximum use should bemade of materials that can be rescued fromdamaged buildings, whenever possible.However, tents should be available instockpiles and, if necessary, will provideadequate temporary shelter against theweather and/or when the improvisation ofother shelters is not feasible.

One advantage of tent schools is thatthey can rapidly focus effort in providingassistance and care to children. Anotheradvantage is that they may be stockpiledand re-used as part of emergency prepared-ness.

Site planning in refugee and IDP camps isessential and should reflect a decentralizedsmall-community approach, preservingpast social arrangements as much as possi-ble.1 Given that no previous structures andbuildings are available under these condi-tions, the prefabricated tent and/or poles,and plastic sheeting are currently the mostutilized responses in emergency situations.

IV.2 Tented schools

Very few systematic experiences exist thatemphasize the use of tents and other formsof mobile schools.

Two case studies are considered: thePhilippines Mobile Tent School (MTS) andthe UNESCO Mobile Tent Schools for chil-dren of deprived groups in the Arab world.

IV.2.1.MTS IN THE PHILIPPINES

In the case of Philippines, the basic educa-tional needs of seven ethnic groups,whether migrants or hard-to-reach popula-tions, were covered using mobile tented

units. The MTS was an answer to themobile nature of the ethnic tribes, whomigrate perennially in search of food. Theteacher of the MTS moved from one settle-ment to the next,holding classes in tents ormakeshift shelters. Thus, the teacherbecame a government ‘broker’ who notonly looked after the educational needs ofthe learners, but also assisted in food pro-duction, health, civics and other concerns.The course content of the MTS was limitedto the basic essentials of survival, and basicliteracy and numeracy.

Instructional facilities and materials con-sisted of temporary facilities, such as a col-lapsible tent, collapsible chairs, tables andboards, that are locally produced. A mobilelibrary together with multimedia instruc-tional materials also provided support tothe MTS teacher.2

IV.2.2.MTS IN THE ARAB WORLD3

Several projects have been developed inthe Arab World to provide children, youngnomads and displaced populations with abasic education. Three types of solutionshave been considered: (a) schools that pro-vide special schooling to nomad childrennear Bedouin encampments; (b) boardingschools; or (c) MTS. Special schools fornomads or boarding schools cause familiesto be separated from their children, a factthat tends to disrupt the fabric of familylife. Moreover, these schools are not likelyto attract girls due to the Bedouins’disincli-nation to part company with their youngdaughters.

45

IV. The physical educational environment in complex emergencies

1 UNHCR, Handbook for emergencies, Geneva,1982, p. 56-57.

2 Gloria Z. Lasam, Philippines: mobile tent schoolfor selected communities, Geneva,UNESCO/IBE, 1990. (Literacy lessons.)

3 Usam Ghaidan, Mobile tent schools, Amman,UNESCO/UNEDBAS, 1996. This document is asystematic response to some of the problems dis-cussed during the Sub-Regional Seminar on theProvision of Schooling to Children of DeprivedGroups in the Arab World, Khartoum, 1995.

These disadvantages do not arise in thecase of mobile schools, for the simple rea-son that these structures move with thetribe and can provide services to the entirecommunity—children and adults alike.However, mobility does have its disadvan-tages too. Contacts between the schoolsand the central educational authoritybecome difficult, thus leading to the possi-bility of breakdowns in supplies, inspec-tion,backstopping and so on.

The use of the classical tent hanging fromstayed poles has continued throughout thecenturies. It did not differ in essence fromthe present Arab tent, the so-called beit-el-sha’r = house of (goat) hair, but this tradi-tional Arab tent was not able to meet thespace standards needed for teaching. Anew, larger prototype, free from internalsupports, is needed for this purpose.

To substitute the internal columns by asystem of external supports designed to liftthe tent from the outside is feasible struc-turally; but the large thickness of the hori-zontal transverse beams required to resistbending and prevent deflection make thestructure too heavy to transport and han-dle. What is needed is a self-supportingmembrane whose geometric form doesnot create downloads needing columns ortransverse beams to carry them. A saddle-shaped, three-dimensional form, the so-called hyperbolic paraboloid, is proposedfor the design of the tent school.

The design is illustrated on the backcover. The basic unit is an 8-metre squareon the plan, and is 4 metres high. The sup-porting structure consists of hollow alu-minium pipes joined together by means of

T and elbow connectors to facilitate erec-tion, dismantling and transportation. Thegross area of the basic unit is 64 m2. Onepart is curtained off to form a classroomwith a door and seven transparent win-dows.The net area of the classroom is 40 to50m2,large enough to accommodate 20–40pupils.Seating may be on mats or on chairs

Furniture should be light, and easy topack and transport. The wall partitions areunable to support wall hangings.However,a device proposed to perform this functionconsists of a pipe suspended from theexternal structure to carry maps, visualaids,notice boards,etc.

A set of canvas pockets for storingpupils’ belongings is also included.Repeating the unit as required can gener-ate larger schools. In this case, one unit atleast is to be reserved for use as a staffroom. In larger schools, a storeroom andactivity room will also be needed.

The prototype shown incorporates acanopy, which is also a membrane struc-ture, positioned to define an outdoor playand assembly area. The tent school has thepotential of being used as a multi-servicecentre for the community providing litera-cy classes, skills training, club facilities, aswell as health and veterinary services.

Running a mobile school demands flexi-bility from the teaching staff. Bedouinssleep early and rise early. The school daycould adapt to this pattern by starting andending earlier than normal,thus permittingpupils to help their parents with their dailywork.(For the specifications and approximatecosting of this model tent, see box.)

46 The physical educational environment

SPECIFICATION FOR A MOBILE TENT SCHOOL

Framework: aluminium hollow pipes (made up of 1.6m. sections) joined by elbow connectors.

Canopy: single-piece construction in the form of a hyperbolic paraboloid. Water resistant polyvinylchloride in

red, green, blue or yellow.

Walls: free hanging membrane in white polyvinylchloride welded to canopy, with seven transparent windows

and a door.

Floor: polyvinylchloride with eyelets and pegs.

Cost estimate (1997): US$6,500 per unit (including shipping and insurance to destination).

BRAC Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee

CDC Curriculum Development CentreCHAL Christian Health Association of LiberiaCRC Convention on the Rights of the ChildCOPE Complementary Opportunity

for Primary EducationEC European Commission/European UnionEDC Educational development centreEPMU Education programme managementESCC Education Sector Co-ordination

CommitteeGINIE Global International Network

in EducationGOR Government of RwandaGNP Gross national productGTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische

ZusammenarbeitIBE International Bureau of EducationIDP Internally displaced personsIG Instructor’s guideIGA Income-generating activitiesIP Implementing partnerJRS Jesuit Refugee ServiceLMAP Land-mine awareness programmeMAC Mine-awareness campaignMAP Mine-awareness programmeMAEP Mine-awareness education packageMOE Ministry of EducationMTS Mobile tent schoolNGO Non-governmental organizationNRC Norwegian Refugee CouncilOCHA Office for the Co-ordination of

Humanitarian AffairsPDO Project development officerPEER Programme for Education

for Emergency and ReconstructionPEP Peace education packagePTA Parent/teacher associationPTSS Programme and Technical

Support SectionREEPP- Refugee Environmental Education Kenya Pilot Project in KenyaSOMOLU Somalia Open Learning UnitTEP Teacher emergency packageTTC Teacher-training college UN United NationsUNDHA United Nations Department of

Humanitarian AffairsUNDP United Nations Development

ProgrammeUNESCO United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural OrganizationUNICEF United Nations Children’s FundUNICEF- United Nations Children’s FundEMOPS Office of Emergency ProgrammesUNHCR United Nations High Commissioner

for RefugeesUNOSOM United Nations for SomaliaWFP World Food Programme

Baxter, P.; Fisher J.; Retamal, G. Mine-awarenesseducation. Geneva, International Bureau ofEducation/UNESCO, 1997.

Dodge, C.P.; Raudalen, M. Reaching children inwar: Sudan, Uganda and Mozambique.Søreidgrend, Norway, UNICEF/Sigma Forlag, 1991.

Cummings,W.K.; Dall, F.P. Implementing qualityprimary education for countries in transi-tion.Amman, UNICEF-MENARO,Al KutbaPublishers, 1995.

Ghaidan, U. Mobile tent schools, Amman,UNESCO/UNEDBAS, 1996.

Husén,T.; Postlethwaite,T.N., eds. The inter-national encyclopedia of education, vol. 3.London; New York, Pergamon, 1994.

Landers, C. Listen to me: protecting the develop-ment of young children in armed conflict.New York, UNICEF/EMOPS, 1998.

Lewy, A., ed. The international encyclopedia ofcurriculum. Oxford, UK; New York,Pergamon, 1991.

Retamal, G.; Aedo-Richmond, R., eds. Educationas a humanitarian response. London,Cassell, 1998.

Raundalen, M. Introduction to war traumatreatment. Kigali, UNICEF-Rwanda, 1994.

Tuijman, A.C., ed. International encyclopediaof adult education and training, 2nd ed.Oxford, UK, Pergamon, 1996.

UNHCR. Handbook for emergencies. Geneva,1982.

UNHCR. Refugee children: guidelines on protec-tion and care. Geneva, 1994.

UNHCR. Revised guidelines for educationalassistance to refugees, Geneva,PTSS/UNHCR, 1995.

UNICEF. Implementation handbook for theConvention on the Rights of the Child, pre-pared by R. Hodgkin and Peter Newell.Geneva, UNICEF, 1998.

47List of acronyms and abbreviations Select bibliography

About the authors

Pilar Aguilar is at present a Senior Emergency Training Adviser for the Office ofEmergency Programmes (EMOPS) at UNICEF,Geneva.She has worked in Eastern Africa asUNICEF Senior Education Officer in Rwanda between 1994 and 1997,and also as an edu-cation consultant in Djibouti,Jordan and Somalia.She had previously worked as a consult-ant evaluating the situation of Salvadorian refugees in Mexico; she was also an associateresearcher of the Confederation of Central American Universities. Ms. Aguilar holds aPh.D. in Educational Studies from the University of Hull. She has written several publica-tions on teacher training and humanitarian education.E-mail :[email protected]

Gonzalo Retamal is at present a Senior Research Specialist at the UNESCO Institute forEducation in Hamburg.He was,until recently, the representative of UNESCO in the ‘Foodfor Oil’ Programme in Iraq. He has created and developed the UNESCO Programme forEducation for Emergencies and Reconstruction (PEER) operating in Eastern Africa(Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, and the United Republic of Tanzania).Previously, he was Chief of the School Education Programme of UNRWA in the MiddleEast, Senior Education Officer of UNHCR in Geneva, and also worked in Central Americaand the Caribbean.Mr Retamal holds a Ph.D. from the Adult Education Department at theUniversity of Hull.He has several publications on refugee and humanitarian education.E-mail:[email protected]

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