The Power of a Transitional Justice Approach to Education

This paper explores the power of a transitional justice approach to education reconstruction in post-conflict settings. Its central question is how the aims of transitional justice can guide educational reform processes after conflict or periods of massive human rights violations, with the final goal of helping to promote guarantees of nonrepetition. How does a transitional justice approach specifically contribute to peacebuilding through education? (p. 1). Includes:

• The Past Role of Education in Conflict
• Mechanisms of a Justice-Sensitive Approach to Education
  • Structural Reforms
  • Curriculum Change
  • Teaching Approaches
  • School Culture
  • Teacher Education
• Challenges of a Transitional Approach to Education
  • The Wider Context Within Which Education Operates
  • Willingness to Confront the Past
  • Barriers to Critical Thinking
  • Decision Making in Programming and Planning
  • Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice Initiatives

Is it possible for justice-sensitive education to contribute to consolidating peace? In spite of the challenges, such an approach has indeed greater power than some less political or politicized initiatives in the peacebuilding field. Its major and distinctive strength lies precisely in its constant "two-way gaze" approach. As Oglesby notes, the goal of truth commission accords is often to put a "final note" to discussions of the past with the production of a report that would close the book. But instead, such accords should be seen as points of departure (p. 76).Justice-sensitive approaches to education reform require open acknowledgment of the role that education itself may have played in the previous conflict and patterns of abuse. Some attempt to address this in a manner that is different from more traditional peace education programs. Grievances that led to conflict may have included those about educational access or about cultural or linguistic exclusion. Attempting to redress these will open some space to the reduction of education's role in conflict, even if the major sources of grievance lie outside the education system. In any reconstruction, it is a question of helping to avoid some of the mistakes made in simply recreating education as it was (p. 77).