Education and Transitional Justice
Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding
The aim of this report is to provide practitioners and policy makers in both transitional justice and education with conceptual clarity and practical guidance for developing synergies between their respective fields in responding to past human rights violations. Drawing from a comparative approach that examines different experiences throughout the world, this report does not offer a blueprint for addressing past injustices through education, but, rather, considerations that should be taken into account when framing policy that is based on the particularities of a given context.
The report looks at how a transitional justice framework can play an important role in identifying educational deficits related to the logic of past conflict and repression and informing the reconstruction of the education sector. It also looks at how formal and informal education can facilitate and sustain the work of transitional justice measures.ICTJ and UNICEF collaborated on a research project to explore the questions:
- How can transitional justice contribute to peacebuilding goals by shaping the reform of education systems and facilitating the reintegration of children and youth into those systems?
- How can education serve to promote the goals of transitional justice by expanding its outreach agenda and helping change a culture of impunity into one of respect for human rights and the democratic rule of law?
This project involved the commissioning of 17 papers, including case and thematic studies, and the organization of a two-day workshop in New York in October 2014, where a group of experts on education, transitional justice, child protection, and peacebuilding discussed the findings. Additionally, background research and interviews were conducted with education specialists and transitional justice practitioners. This report summarizes the project's key findings.