What is humanitarian education and does it help build peace?

By Chloe Bruce

First of three parts

Humanitarian education refers to educational initiatives developed or supported by humanitarian organizations to reduce suffering, protect vulnerable populations, and help communities recover from conflict and disaster. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees defines humanitarian education as an initiative that “is implemented in a humanitarian context and is inclusive of refugee and other marginalized learners.”

With wars and conflicts becoming increasingly common in the 21st century, education has taken on greater significance. According to a 2025 United Nations article, of the 234 million school-age children affected by conflict worldwide, 85 million are completely out of school. Helena Murseli, global lead of the UNICEF Education in Emergencies team, called the situation “unprecedented.” “These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a global pattern of escalating conflict that affects children’s right to learn,” she said.

There is an urgent need to help develop spaces to provide a caring environment, especially for children experiencing conflict and displacement. “Refugee children deserve an education of quality that will last them a lifetime. Education must be an integral part of our response to emergencies, not an afterthought that falls gradually into neglect,” states the UN Refugee Agency.

Humanitarian education encompasses a wide range of educational goals, teaching methods, and pedagogical approaches. To understand its effectiveness, this article examines its purpose and ultimate goal, its link to the humanitarian mandate to reduce conflict and human suffering, and, most importantly, whether it has achieved its objectives.

Why Humanitarian Education Is Important

Using education to develop a peaceful society has been foundational to the concept of schooling throughout human history. Two of history’s most prominent teachers, Confucius and Plato, both spoke of the purpose of education as creating “harmonious societies.” Over time, education was institutionalized, first by religious bodies and then by political ones. Colonialism rooted these educational structures worldwide. A 2023 Brookings article by Ghulam Omar Qargha and Emily Markovich Morris, from the Center for Universal Education, states, “In most countries under colonial influence, the colonizing forces used modern schooling to develop a workforce in the colony, spread culture and values, control the local populations from opposing colonial rule, and create a sense of national unity among colonized peoples.” Those purposes still rigidly define mainstream education today.

In the 20th century, following two catastrophic wars that engulfed large parts of the world, alternative models developed to recenter the role of education in nurturing peaceful, nonviolent societies. The United Nations created UNESCO to ensure a “peaceful coexistence between nations,” with the motto that “[s]ince wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” This helped pave the way for international organizations to highlight the importance of education, not only to sustain peace in conflict areas but also as a means to build a safe and nurturing environment for children in these countries and regions.

On a global scale, humanitarian educational endeavors focus on highlighting the value of education and ensuring universal access to it. Humanitarian education comes under the umbrella of Education for All (EFA). “Education for all is a principle advocating that all children, young people and adults should have access to quality education, regardless of background or circumstance,” the UNESCO website explains. The EFA declaration affirms that “education can help ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous and environmentally sound world, while simultaneously contributing to social, economic and cultural progress, tolerance and international cooperation.” This shows that the international community’s push for wider participation in education stems from the idea that a more educated world is a more peaceful one.

There are, however, several limitations to this idea and its implementation. As UNESCO notes in its blog about the links between education, violence, and well-being, despite evidence that higher levels of basic education are associated with reduced national violent conflict, this claim remains ambiguous.

Although the number of people who receive at least a basic education has reversed since 1800, from one in five receiving a basic education to one in five who have not received any formal education, according to 2020 figures analyzed by Our World in Data, there is no way to prove this is a direct result of humanitarian education initiatives. The sharp uptick in education post-World War II suggests that the global shift in perceptions toward education, of which the UN was an integral part, has contributed to increased access to education. Other important developments include the recognition of education as a human right, which helped pave the way for another key humanitarian educational concept: education in emergencies (EiE). In her article in the Comparative Education Review, Julia C. Lurch emphasizes that “rights-based conceptions of education provided a powerful cultural frame that helped legitimate greater attention to EiE.” Education in emergencies has since become another pillar in humanitarian organizational responses to conflict.

Girls are often disproportionately affected in humanitarian emergencies. According to the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), girls are among those most excluded from education during crises and are especially vulnerable to dropping out of school. To cope with this situation, the UN argues that “Education in emergencies should become an integral part of a long-term strategy to develop inclusive education systems in countries affected by armed conflict.”

The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), established following the 2000 EFA conference in Dakar, promotes and helps to guide frameworks and approaches to EiE. The INEE states that providing education to children impacted by conflict helps reduce their suffering: “Education in emergencies provides physical, psychosocial, and cognitive protection that can sustain and save lives.” It further states that when parents and children living in conflict situations were asked what they most needed, they said they wanted to continue their education. “According to 8,749 children caught up in 17 different emergencies—ranging from conflict to protracted crises and disasters—who took part in 16 studies by eight organizations covering 17 different emergencies, 99 percent of children in crises see education as a priority,” states the INEE.

Unfortunately, education programs are facing dramatic cuts. “Today, only 3 percent of humanitarian aid goes to education. Yet the children most in need of a good education are also at greatest risk of having their learning disrupted, whether by conflict, violence, pandemics, climate, or other crises,” according to the World Bank.

Putting the long-term effects of this lack of funding into perspective, Murseli said, “We’re talking about 234 million children’s future and ultimately, global stability and development. The cost of inaction far exceeds the investment needed to get every crisis-affected child learning.”

An article in the Human Rights Education Review shows that humanitarian education not only teaches children basic subject concepts but is also essential for teaching school-age children how to exercise their human rights while respecting the rights of others.

Restoring Access to Education

Humanitarian organizations’ efforts to promote education go beyond merely advancing the idea of education; they also involve physically restoring access to education in disaster zones. For example, UNICEF, the World Food Program, and Save the Children, funded by the World Bank, helped rebuild Yemen’s education system between 2021 and 2024, following decades of instability, conflict, and famine. While there is not sufficient evidence of this project’s success, it aimed to rehabilitate 1,000 schools across Yemen, pay teachers incentives to ensure attendance, build rural teaching capacity, provide learners with equipment and healthy snacks, and train teachers to improve their ability to teach literacy and numeracy.

“Yemen’s education system continues to face immense challenges. More than 2.5 million children are currently out of school, while 2,375 schools have been damaged or destroyed, severely limiting access to safe learning environments across the country. To support the recovery of the sector, the National Education Sector Plan 2024–2030 was launched in 2025, defining national priorities and guiding international support for rebuilding Yemen’s education system,” states an April 2026 UNESCO report.

According to research by the Global Education Cluster, a forum for coordination and collaboration on education in humanitarian crises, the affordability of educational supplies and the lack of schools in the community are key barriers to accessing education. There, meanwhile, seems to be a division of opinion on the effectiveness of such educational initiatives.

As Maha Shuayb, director of the Center for Lebanese Studies, explains in her article for The New Humanitarian, educational initiatives do not always succeed. Her review of EiE for Syrian refugees displaced in Lebanon found that the Lebanese state education system could only accommodate 50 percent of school-age Syrian refugees, which resulted in learners being split into morning and afternoon shifts, with the afternoon cohort experiencing fewer positive outcomes than the morning shift. This resulted from the incompatibility between the educational needs of displaced people and the Lebanese school system.

Due to national regulations, lessons could only be taught by Lebanese citizens; students had to learn some subjects in French or English, even though most spoke Arabic as a first language. International donors funded this initiative and did not sustainably improve the system to build long-term capacity. “Ten years later, the results speak for themselves. Syrian refugee enrollment in Lebanese state schools is below 30 percent, with less than 4 percent progressing to secondary education.” She argues that this approach to providing education in emergencies is inherently flawed, as “85 percent of the refugee population is hosted in low- and middle-income countries, where educational systems may already be strained: Enrolling children in a struggling system is extremely challenging.”

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Chloe Bruce is a nonprofit communications specialist and project manager who has worked and volunteered with humanitarian organizations in the UK, Australia, Colombia, China, and Canada. She studied English and history at the University of Edinburgh before earning a master’s degree in leadership and international development from King’s College London. She also holds an advanced diploma in humanitarian education from the University of Teacher Education Zug. She is a contributor to the Observatory.

This article was produced for the Observatory by the Independent Media Institute.