Gender Dimensions of Education in Conflict-Affected Contexts

More than a dozen international legal instruments have confirmed the protection of children’s rights, beginning with the United Nations Charter in 1945, it was Machel’s groundbreaking report in 1996, Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, which spurred international action on access to education in conflict-affected contexts. However, with only five years remaining to achieve the international Education for All goals, persistent inequities between and within countries exist, and the Commonwealth is not immune. In more recent times, conflict has endangered the right to education in Kenya, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Uganda among others.

In view of their low completion rates, severe quality issues, and constrained domestic financing, UNESCO’s 2009 Education for All Global Monitoring Report noted ‘a very limited commitment to needs-based aid financing’ (2008:213) of conflict-affected and other fragile states. Often neglected gender dimensions are of critical importance in needs-based analyses of education, particularly in contexts characterized by human rights violations, internal displacement, and refugee outflows.

The literature notes that not only have patriarchal structures influenced the aid architecture for education, but that ‘most analyses of conflict are largely ungendered’ (Byrne, 1996:32) rendering programmatic responses ineffective in such contexts. In addition to the obvious consequences of conflict on education systems such as the obliteration of school buildings and the inability to deploy sufficient numbers of teachers, much research has exposed the differential effects of conflict on the lives of women and men, girls and boys and their access to education.

Particular gendered effects have surfaced: sexual violence against female students and teachers in schools (e.g. Sierra Leone), schools as recruitment sites for boys and girls as child soldiers (e.g. Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka), non-completion due to internal displacement (e.g. Nepal, Sudan), and chronic absenteeism due to premature uptake of adult domestic roles by girls and informal economic activity by boys (e.g. Pakistan). The compounded effects of exclusion from education can only be understood by an appreciation that conflict most severely affects those who are already marginalised. Thus, women and girls belonging to ethnic, religious, and other minority groups are most likely to face ‘hard-core exclusion’ (Kabeer, 2000) from education in conflict-affected contexts.

While gender disparities are prevalent in countries with relative low levels of school enrolment and attendance, the problem is acute in refugee camps. Case studies from Kenya show that many male youth in Kakuma and Dadaab settlements dropped out of school because they did not have access to employment opportunities. Insecure camp environments and reports of gang rape foster ambivalence among parents in sending their daughters to school. Socially ascribed roles also impede access. For example, girls are reportedly routinely driven out of school to collect food rations from the distribution centres or are forcibly married (Sommers, 2001; 2002).

Reintegration of former child soldiers poses particular challenges to education access since it requires community acceptance of children who were perpetrators as well as victims of violent conflict (Betancourt et al., 2008). Moreover, the interruption of their schooling in formative years results in low literacy and numeracy baseline levels. Studies on the educational experience of former child soldiers in Uganda, point to further impediments due to post-traumatic stress disorder, physical disability, sexual violence, and orphaning.

Research in Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone shows that access to education services and opportunities for former child soldiers is gendered (Landry, 2006). As roles for child soldiers are also gendered, with girls primarily serving as sexual and domestic servants and boys as fighters, particular attention should be given to the needs of girl-mothers, girl victims of sexual violence, and girls that were ‘married’ to combatants.

In post-conflict contexts, access to meaningful employment for youth is the primary route to building self-esteem, a sense of community belonging and contribution, and social cohesion. Experiences in such settings have led to an emerging sense that young people, including former child soldiers, may most directly benefit from expanding adult literacy, life skills, and technical/vocational education programmes sensitive to gendered patterns of work and training (Blattman, 2006; Bethke and Braunschweig, 2004; Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2008). Sustained efforts are required to implement a post-conflict education agenda with a renewed understanding of gender inequalities over power and resources in these contexts.

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