Education Sustainability in the Relief-Development Transition

This article examines the challenges that affect sustainability of educational support provided by international organizations during the relief-development transition in post-conflict countries. Given the growing consensus within the international community about the role that education can play in humanitarian response and the long-term development perspective that is expected to accompany educational support provided in these contexts, this qualitative study draws on structured interviews with practitioner-experts working in different types of international organizations to present the key challenges for the sustainability of educational support in the relief-development transition. The primary methodological technique employed for the study was in-depth, structured interviews with 12 practitioner-experts from a range of organizations, including NGOs, UN agencies and donors from Canada, Europe and the United States working actively in the field of education in emergencies.

The findings presented here reflect consensus across the practitioner-experts in this study about the challenges that affect the sustainability of educational support provided by international organizations. These oftentimes interrelated challenges are diverse and cover a wide spectrum of issues involving: the ways in which operational frameworks affect planning processes and organizational engagement in the transition between humanitarian relief and development; capacity building provided through technical assistance to governmental officials and community members; internal human resources development; coordination with and across partners; and funding and finances (or lack thereof) for education.

Governmental top-down and community-driven bottom-up approaches are required to facilitate education sustainability. Integrate educational support provided into the system—i.e. the government level, community level or both—by transferring responsibility of the program to the appropriate stakeholders. The integration of educational support into the system was considered a key factor, but the terms ‘‘integration'' and ‘‘system'' should be defined very broadly.