Kenya

​Education in situations of conflict and crisis is central in efforts to protect children and youth in the near-term and fostering peaceful coexistence over the longer-term. But how can education enable individuals and communities to build durable futures when there is great uncertainty about where these futures will be? 

Kristian Hoelscher has been granted YRT funding from the Research Council of Norway for the three-year project Political Transformation in African Cities (PACE). As project leader, Kristian will collaborate with Sean Fox from the University of Bristol, Jeffrey Paller from the University of San Francisco, Taibat Lawanson from the University of Lagos and Melanie Phillips from UC Berkeley.

​Over four sessions in October, 20 academics and practitioners from around the world met virtually to discuss the question of how education can enable refugee individuals and communities to build durable futures when there is great uncertainty about where these futures will be? Recognizing the protracted nature of refugee situations, the latest UNHCR education strategy prioritizes the integration of refugees into the national education systems of host countries. While this strategy may increase refugee children and youth's access to 'inclusive and equitable quality education' (SDG4), it fails to recognize the limbo in which refugees find themselves in low- and middle-income host countries: they are non-citizens who cannot access the durable futures that education promises them.

​​Øystein H. Rolandsen is co-editor of a new volume highlighting the violent struggles of Eastern African nations from the end of colonialism and throughout the Cold War.