Educational day

Monday was a day of education for me. At lunchtime, I chaired a seminar on education and peace, with UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Preparing for the event, I learnt things I did not know about research at PRIO.

Gudrun Østby and Henrik Urdal recently completed a background report on Education and Civil Conflict for UNESCO’s 2011 Education for All Monitoring Report. Among their key findings (Authors’ formulations):

• Sequence: increasing education and opportunities for young people reduces the risk of conflict, although it is important to note that it may not be sufficient to offer mainly primary education as it is typically at the secondary education level that students acquire competencies that are in demand in the modern sectors of the economy; education has to be followed by real economic opportunities
• Access: that systematic group differences in access to education (‘horizontal inequalities’) increase conflict risk
• Quality: that the content of education (both quality and stereotyping) is likely to be important, but that we have very weak systematic evidence (poor monitoring systems esp in poorer countries)

In the discussion between Bokova and Støre, educational quality was a main issue. Access was touched upon in various ways. Sequence was barely mentioned, and UNESCO is overly focused on basic education at the cost of further education. When I tried to trigger debate by indicating that the relationship between education and peace may be negative – for example when the sequence is wrong – this was not picked up (but it was discussed at the dinner in the evening). All in all, a great learning experience for me.

It was only timely then, that the afternoon was spent at the US Ambassador’s residence, in a reception in honor of Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, and, more importantly, a simple-is-beautiful school-building entrepreneur in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In between, Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, whom I work with on a project about Afghanistan in a Neighbourhood Perspective, gave a wonderfully rich presentation at the MFA on South Asian security dynamics and its impact on Afghanistan.