Education, Aid, and Global Security Agenda : the case of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

Introduction

As of the end of 2022, about 43.3 million children had been displaced as a consequence of conflict and violence (UNICEF, 2023). The increasing numbers of refugees forcibly displaced worldwide pose a great challenge regarding the provision of education in refugee contexts, and the challenges that are hindering existing processes. Education for refugees has been increasingly considered a central pillar of humanitarian response (Sinclair, 2001). Encouraging quality education for refugees is promoted by development institutions as a highly beneficial investment. According to the World Bank, investing in refugee education favors higher income, therefore reducing aid dependency as well as a better ability to contribute to host country economies, and eventually to a sustainable return to countries of origin (World Bank, 2023). Lebanon hosts around 987,000 Syrian refugees, 490,000 being children of school age (UNHCR, 2018). Very few political systems in world history have been exposed to a larger number of refugees than Lebanon, as a result of forced migration in the wake of the 2011 Syrian civil war. In Lebanon, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested (European Commission, 2023), and yet, after almost a decade of education interventions for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, only around 220,000 children attend lessons in the Lebanese system and more than 40% of children are out of school or have never been enrolled (UNHCR, 2018; Norwegian Refugee Council, 2020). 

This failure poses two questions about the vested interests behind education aid in humanitarian settings: firstly, about the humanitarian model as a mechanism chosen by the Lebanese Government to answer the education crisis for Syrian refugees, and secondly, about the motivations for donor countries sending money. This article claims that it perpetrates the real problems of the education crisis and plays a role in the political economy of the country. 
Humanitarian aid in conflict-affected environments has been promoted as an enterprise whose inherent value is neutrality (Sözer, 2019). Critical literature on the notion of aid has argued that development and humanitarianism (understood here as two concepts with blurred lines, as it is considered as assistance through funding) while claiming impartiality and effectiveness, are also pushed by exterior agendas and motivations that hinder a positive outcome for the beneficiary (Rappleye, 2011; Sabaratnam 2013). In the last ten years, scholars have identified the emergence of new spaces of power in international development. This multi-polar landscape intersects various agendas including human rights, global justice, but also security, and financial concerns in a post-2008 crisis world (Unterhalter, 2015). The traditional principles of impartiality are incoherent with key features of the new world and the multiple actors (multi-national companies, governments, multi-lateral institutions, political organizations…) that carry humanitarian enterprises for varying reasons. This language of neutrality hides highly political operations, conducted by actors whose political or financial interests drive them to humanitarian actions (Woodward, 2007), and instrumentalizes the fight for refugee rights for education and the contextual complexities. These interventions draw on a liberal paradigm of development that strives for human rights and global justice while promoting liberal democracy and free markets (Magee & Pherali, 2019). Yet, the lack of results suggests that this approach is firstly inefficient, as the specific needs of children in emergencies are not met and secondly unethical, as it perpetuates the real problems of education crisis and plays a role in the political economy situation. Looking at the ambiguous features of humanitarianism, Jeremy Rappleye’s critical analysis of “failed development” challenges the traditional view and rethinks the delivery processes as well as the relationship between donor and recipients (Rappleye, 2011). Here, the question of education aid is problematic as it is based on human capital theory and provides false hopes of mobility, liberation, and independence, which is incoherent with the absence of tangible results. 

To develop education aid as a transformative force for Syrian refugees, this essay aims to understand the motivations behind humanitarian funding for the donor countries, and organizations, as well as the motivations for the Lebanese government to maintain the state of humanitarian crisis and receive exterior funding, showing how these arrangements tend to further away from concerns with refugee rights. What role can critical humanitarianism play in building an enterprise that highlights individual rights, state responsibilities, and a new approach to chains of responsibility and global justice, moving beyond short-term containment of human rights crises?

Education in a humanitarian context: how has education been affected in that specific context?

To understand the way education is being promoted in a humanitarian setting, this first section tackles the nexus between education and conflict and the limitations in providing an effective framework for refugee education. 

If education has been promoted by the development field as a way of increasing well-being in refugee settings, as well as a way of encouraging dialogue, peace, and tolerance (Burde et al., 2017), the growing field of research on education and conflict has questioned priorities and practices and interrogated the role of education in fueling conflict or promoting peace (Pherali, 2019). More and more, the need to recognize the multi-factorial aspect of education in conflict settings, serving as a mechanism for social change but also as an integral part of national and global political agenda, playing control over vulnerable populations, and maintaining power and agency between public and private elites (Pherali, 2015; 2019). Scholars recognize that striving for access to education in conflict settings is directly linked to the politics of education, understood as a larger perspective involving topics of security and political economy. The post-Cold War world was marked by the emergence of new forms of global authority, bringing positive formalization of engagements towards Human Rights through conventions, as well as a phenomenon of globalization.  A shift occurred in education policy-making, where nation-states had autonomy, and extra-territorial instances influenced school practices and policies, often aligning with exterior donor interests (Dryden-Peterson, 2016). Refugee education, being outside the structures of national law, needs to be considered in the context of multi-dimensional actors organizing peacebuilding interventions from outside, becoming a “blooming business” (Debiel & Rinck, 2016). With the war on terror, and later the war in Syria, the concern with radicalization in the West and the expanding discourse on global rights, in tension with local implementation of development and humanitarian interventions brought forward debates around education and security. The emergence of the Education for All movement (World Conference on Education for All, 1990), and the declaration of the goals at the World Education Forum in Dakar, in April 2000, marked a global agreement on educational practices and priorities for greater results. Education delivery became officially a priority of humanitarian development. This had considerable implications for states receiving aid (majoritarian in conflict or post-conflict states) as education practices were part of a global strategy depending on external bodies (like the World Bank or United Nations agency). The reliance on these bodies is crucial for the determination of national educational policies, and the pressure put on education aid budgets to achieve these goals is justified by other benefits, like security and power, encouraging them to maintain these initiatives. In the case of the large-scale displacement of Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon amidst the civil war, what obstacles do Syrian children encounter in accessing education? Furthermore, how does the delivery of educational assistance in this scenario fail to fulfill its intended purpose due to the direct influence of global trends on local education provision?

Education of Syrian refugees in the context of mass displacement: the gap of education as a political tool of maintaining marginalization and inequalities

Global Aspiration for Refugee Education and challenge of implementation 

Despite a growing positive literature in international law and policy on global rights for education for refugees, the local implementation of this right depends on different conditions relative to the specific context. Refugee education is protected under international law following the UN Refugee Convention of 1951 (UNGA, 1951) as part of human rights, fundamental rules based on principles of dignity, equality, and fairness, considered universal and enshrined in international legal instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 or the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 (UNGA, 1948; UN, 1989). However, the implementation of the right to education for refugees is relative to the laws, policies, and practices in place in the national context. Lebanon is not a signatory of the Refugee Convention and therefore the law doesn’t apply (Moghli, 2022; Shuayb, 2020, 2021). Lebanon doesn’t consider itself an asylum country and leaves the responsibility of refugee status determination to UNHCR, but there is no right to seek asylum or have any legal status (UN, 2015). The global normative aspiration for the protection of refugees exists for institutions like the UN, but the mechanisms of imposition of global policies and laws reveal that relationships between organizations (like the UN) and the government of the recipient country (Lebanon) hold power and are tied to interests. This tension is relevant to how education is a multifaceted right (Somers & Roberts, 2008), where politics can orient investments and directly impact refugees while favoring profit.  

Securitizing Refugees: conditions to the marginalization of refugees towards education.
Lebanon’s response to the growing number of Syrian refugees post-2011 was a considerable change in policies toward refugees (Beck, 2023). Before 2011, mobility was relatively accepted between Syria and Lebanon. As the political situation in Syria worsened, the Lebanese government forbade going and coming across borders (Chalcraft, 2009 cited by Moghli, 2021). Factors like the politicization of the Palestinian refugee cause after the Lebanese Civil War, and the complex and diverse relationships of the Lebanese political class to the Syrian government played a determinant role in a growing discourse of securitization toward Syrian refugees (Beck, 2023; Brun & Shuayb, 2020). Securitization refers to the process through which certain social issues are hyper-politicized and portrayed as existential threats and transform these subjects into matters of security concerns (Darwich & Fakhoury, 2016). Lebanese authorities took extraordinary measures against Syrian refugees. The political elite, by engaging in ‘speech acts’ (Wæver et al, 1993), feeds a discourse identifying Syrian refugees as a threat to the national balance, cohesion, and identity. Before the Syrian refugee crisis, public services, including education, were already dysfunctional. The argument of the security agenda of the government; framing refugees as a threat to the well-being of the Lebanese people, and a source of potential terrorism was made through discriminatory procedures, policies, and successful speech acts (Moghli, 2021; Beck, 2023; Brun & Shuayb, 2020). The closing of the territorial border with Syria in 2015 reduced the number of incoming refugees and instructed the UNHCR to stop refugee registration (Estriani, 2019). According to Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver (2003, 491), the audience has to accept the narrative of the securitizing agent (the Lebanese elite, state, and media) towards the existential threat (Syrian refugees), and the referent object (the well-being and identity of Lebanese people). It is considered a source of problems because the failure of public services and the economic crisis saw prices rising for basic needs, electricity, and gas, and unemployment. Access to health and education was already difficult, and the behavior of competition and mistrust grew between refugees and local citizens (Sahin, 2015 cited by Estriani, 2019). Syrian refugees are targeted by discriminatory practices, resulting in structural violence and marginalization that have direct effects on educational provision. Syrians in Lebanon are maintained in a vulnerable position. In early 2015, Lebanon implemented a policy requiring Syrian refugees to renew their residency permits annually for $200. Those not registered with the UNHCR need a Lebanese sponsor to work and live legally. Registered refugees had to pledge not to seek employment in Lebanon; violating this agreement could lead to deportation. This led to most refugees losing their status, and therefore, accessibility to legal services (HRW, 2016a,2016b).

Education systems, although seen as a positive tool in conflict contexts, can also reproduce and perpetrate structural inequalities, as they are ‘machinery of cultural reproduction’, where minority groups can lose their ability to preserve their culture, language, and rights, as the majority culture is favored by the state and its institutions (Buzan, Wæver, and Wilde 1998). Since 2012, the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) opened Lebanese public schools to Syrian refugees under 15 years old, regardless of their legal status, through the programs RACE I and II - Reaching All Children with Education, in partnership with UN agencies UNICEF as strategic and financial partner (Pezzani, 2016). (El-Ghali, Ghalayini & Ismail, 2016). As refugees resided in poor areas where public schools were already in high demand for the local community, the educational system wasn’t ready to handle Syrian refugee children. The public sector was already failing before the Syrian crisis, as it attracted less than 30% of the Lebanese student population (El-Ghali, Ghalayini & Ismail, 2016). Yet, the MEHE took the leadership role in the education plan for vulnerable children (both Lebanese and Syrian children were included) to have access to an affordable education with the RACE plan, by cutting the involvement of NGOs and the international community and the work of UNICEF and UNHCR (Brun & Shuayb, 2020). At this point, MEHE is the main receiver of donations and provider of education. However, the enrolment rates among Syrian refugees in formal education were still lower than 40% (RACE PMU, 2019) and the ones who accessed formal education faced structural inequalities that maintained unequal access and discrimination, reproducing unequal outcomes for different social groups. Problems like the difficulty in adapting to the language of instruction (English or French being the mandatory media of instruction for mathematics and sciences for all schools), transport costs, access to the internet, electricity, books, and supplies but also heavy bullying leading to a high rate of dropouts (Shuayb et al., 2014). Another pressure is put on the social group as Lebanese parents pulled their children out of public schools, fearing a drop in the level of quality due to the enrollment of Syrian refugees (El-Ghali, Ghalayini & Ismail, 2016). Finally, MEHE introduced second-shift classes to target more children, implementing a discriminatory system with restrictions specific to the Syrian identity and refugee status (Moghli, 2020 cited in Moghli, 2022). The government, as the securitizing agent, implements exclusionary policies in the schools, on top of changing legal requirements on residencies and status documentation necessary for enrolment, constituting elements perpetrating a state of ‘normalized violence in interpersonal and daily interactions, accompanying a structural and symbolical violence, to cut the opposition from gaining legitimacy in the eyes of the audience’ (Bourgeois, 2004). According to Buzan and Weaver’s work on ‘conflict in education’, the government’s policies towards Syrian refugees exacerbate not only a disruption in learning, inequitable access to educational resources, and feed an unsafe environment that perpetuates violence and a general dehumanization of Syrian children as a social group. These experiences push the Syrian community into a vulnerable state and seek to make them leave while affirming the leadership in the provision of education for the most vulnerable. The structures of education, with the learning processes (national curriculum and language, as well as spatiality or being separated from the Lebanese students) fuel cultural repression, stereotyping refugee children through pedagogies. Education is used by the Lebanese government as a tool of defense of ‘societal security’, and reproduces the portrayal of Syrian refugee children as ‘existential threats’ (Buzan, 1991; Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, 1998). The public sector was unable to provide access and quality education for a majority of refugees, as Lebanon hosted 2021, approximately 660,000 school-age Syrian refugees, Lebanon hosts 660,000 school-age Syrian refugee children, of which 30% have never been to school, and almost 60 percent have never been enrolled in school (UNHCR, WFP, & UNICEF, 202).         

Global Institutionalization, Humanitarian aid, Donor community, and Refugee Education

The incapacity of the public sector to answer the educational needs of Syrian refugees is furthermore due to a lack of positive cooperation between the donor community external aid, and the government. Lebanon’s ambiguous policies towards Syrian refugees, for example, the radical “no camp policy”, refusal to allow formal camps for refugees, and the limitation of NGOs and UN agencies towards education complicate the humanitarian agencies to distribute aid (Estriani, 2019). If UNHCR, specifically UNICEF were leading the first RACE operations with MEHE, there was a shift and the Lebanese ministry became the main responsible for the agency of education for refugees and the main receiver of donations, and NGO programs were stopped (Brun & Shuyab 2021). The work of NGOs in the provision of education included learning programs focused on catching up on literacy, numeracy, and language gaps. MEHE, by obliging a strong lead on the agency of education hasn’t advantaged the situation, and the limitations of the public sector seem to validate the need for exterior involvement in the education planning. Local and external NGOs opened spaces for non-formal education despite the prohibition of MEHE, but the ministry still targeted these informal spaces, closing the unauthorized schools and forbidding certification (Moghli 2022, Brun & Shuyab 2021). This insistence on being the only instance holding agency and funding on education further deepened the disparities for Syrian refugees, preventing them from meeting the education goals and resulting in aggravating their well-being and hope for a future. Yet, donor countries followed the Lebanese government’s wishes and went on sending funds and building the capacity of MEHE, the responsible organism of agency and planning. For the international community, meaning the UN Member States, migration and specifically the refugee influx, when poorly regulated, can create significant challenges like the overwhelming of social services; in September 2016, the General Assembly signed the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, to develop a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration (UN, 2018). Development aid is therefore sent to countries in conflict or post-conflict states, that present a security threat, for foreign donor countries, investing in development fits a broader strategy of security, furthermore blurring the lines between development and defense. According to Mario Novelli, the “3D” approach (Diplomacy, Defense, and Development) was developed by major international agencies, to orient development toward security priorities (Novelli, 2011). Aid for education and investment in defense-related strategies are merged to answer the threat refugee influx represents for neighboring countries and the “migration governing interventions” of the donor country (Fakhoury, 2020). The 2016 Lebanon-EU Compact’s logic consists of fostering legal aid for education, employment opportunities, stabilization, and resilience-building, in a “crisis governance approach”, or the ambition of stabilizing the situation (Fakhoury, 2020; Moghli, 2022; EU, 2016). The argument made is that the system’s (in)capacity of providing a quality, relevant and inclusive education for all in a context of crisis and conflict and direct impact on “education’s proven potential to build human and social capital, prepare communities for future risks and support stronger state–society relations” (Unterhalter, 2022). Inequitable access to quality education during crises creates a vicious cycle where limited schooling during crises impacts the recovery efforts of the whole society, leading entire generations to face disruptions or miss out on education, leading to long-term transformation and development. In 2016, the EU sent 1.2€ for ‘Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion’ (European Commission 2016 cited in Moghli, 2022), in 2020, €2.2 billion (European Commission 2020) was sent to the Madad fund for Jordan and Lebanon, and €1.3 billion in contracted projects by May 2019 (European Commission 2019). To ensure positive education, it is necessary to ensure a safe learning environment and understand the conditions of adversity that hinder access and practice. As seen previously, the conditions implemented by MEHE were disruptive and reinforced structural violence and marginalization of learners of the community. Nonetheless, the Lebanese agenda concerning Syrian refugee education, although ambiguous and not following the standards of global conventions (UNGA, 1951; UN, 1989), was not put in question by foreign donors, nor was the impact of the interventions that were funded. The Lebanese government received aid to fund the humanitarian response, meaning a temporary response to answer an exceptional crisis. Education aid is therefore oriented and political, as it is framed through a Human Capital framework, entertaining a false promise of a future possibility of mobility, independence, and investment, while underpinning a strategic agenda that prioritizes security and diplomacy matters, incoherent to the goals of education. Humanitarian actors bending to state policies transfer responsibility to the state; in this context, the lack of transparency of the Lebanese authority proves that ‘humanitarianism’, in the terms of Roberto Belloni, doesn’t follow consistently a priority of improving the condition of refugees as the aid sent doesn’t aim for a structural change but for preventing escalation and cross border consequences, while claiming a discourse of global justice (Belloni, 2007). Despite major investments from donors and UN agencies, young refugees continue to struggle with access to basic “human rights”, but the control strategies put in place work to prevent external actors the expanding disorder from conflict-affected areas to the West (Belloni, 2007).  A humanitarian approach is temporary assistance, in helping protect lives in the short term. It is also political, as it objectifies Syrian refugees as passive victims without agency or power, they are not citizens, but objects of threat. For the host country, they represent a financial and social and social burden, and humanitarian strategies imply encouraging a return to their place of origin. If aid served as a ‘humanitarian bandage’, the powers funding it play a political role in placing sanctions on Syria while having little interest in ending their displacement. The involvement of external actors is to prevent short-term negative effects on their societies means giving up political solutions.

Education as a bargaining tool: how do national governments negotiate with international agencies to serve their financial needs?

Refugee communities are therefore a part of a broader strategy of barter between the donor community and the host country, the priorities of both parties exclude the interest (well-being and basic access to services) of Syrian refugees, as they are not represented by any agent, and their voices aren’t heard. Education serves as a bargaining tool for the Lebanese government to negotiate with international agencies to serve their financial or political needs (Moghli, 2022; Beck, 2023; Tsourapas, 2019). By securitizing the immigration of Syrian refugees, Lebanon obtains “refugee rent (Tsourapas 2019). The politicisation of the Syrian issue presented as an existential threat through speech acts had two audiences, the international donor community and the national civil society. The aid sent by international donors was aimed at all vulnerable communities, Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian refugees and immigrants. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the financial aid helped the growth of the Lebanese gross national product of 1.3% in 2014 (UNHCR and UNDP, 2015 cited in Beck, 2023). The presence of refugees represents an opportunity for the Lebanese government to entertain donations from the international community, playing a mitigating role in Lebanese society. Although the aid was humanitarian, and therefore supposedly temporary, it did not serve a deeper purpose of transformative change and wasn’t sufficient in providing access to basic services for human development like education to all Syrian refugees (Beck, 2023; Ghanem, 2015). Ultimately, the Lebanese government’s strategy towards the international community, specifically the UN and the EU was not to bargain the expulsion of Syrian Refugees from the territory (like Turkey), but to promote leadership in handling the crisis, aligning with the external donor’s values, expectations and priorities, and in return, the aid (obtained thanks to the presence of Syrian Refugees contributes to stabilizing the socio-economic situation (Tsourapas, 2019; Beck, 2023).

Education as a Victim, Perpetrator, Liberator and Peacebuilder

The Lebanese government, as a stakeholder, benefits directly from “the ambiguity and inconsistency of his position towards the audience, between ‘protector’ and ‘perpetrator’ (Bourgeois, 2004). Education in this context needs to be considered as impacting and impacting social, political, and cultural dynamics in the conflict-affected society. The oscillation between the detrimental effects of the conflict and the structural violence impacting education and education itself, as a reproductive tool of violence in society can be read and understood in the VPLP framework (Pherali & al, 2022). Violent conflict like the 2011 civil war in Syria results in mass displacements, and have a direct impact on the educational parcourse of the children. Education as a victim means not only educational access is limited, but the challenges are also in the socio-political dynamics implied in the schooling environment: the language of instruction, the certification, the economic disparities (transportation issues), and the lack of trauma response and structures to help with the violent experience of conflict. As seen previously, the conditions of learning put by the host community can ‘fuel social tension and their host community’ (Shanks, 209 cited in Pherali, 2022). Prioritizing education is a privilege for a Syrian family. There are no prospects of coming back to the country, and no realistic future in Lebanon, as the government implemented exclusionary laws on work (can only work in certain and very few fields), and higher education is expensive. First needs, shelter, and bringing food home are the main priority. Many children sell gum or low-cost products on the streets (HRW, 2016) because of the high precariousness of adults who are not allowed to work legally. But the contested role of education, effecting violence and insecurity, as the complexities within the field of aid bend into reproducing patterns of violence and exclusion. The promise of education interventions and campaigns in Lebanon stated a hopeful future full of opportunities; as stated on the UNESCO website  “they give hope that we will not have a lost generation of Syrians, deprived of education” (UNESCO, 2019), yet, it fails to address problems of access and quality. Education as a perpetrator means as seen previously, that the conditions of learning put by the host community can ‘fuel social tension and their host community’ (Shanks, 209 cited in Pherali, 2022). The marginalizing practices of segregating students depending on their status (refugee or non-refugee), biased curricula (Syrian schools and curriculum are illegal in Lebanon, as well as Syrian refugee teachers being employed by public schools), the language of instruction and the certification maintain unjust educational practices depriving communities the right to transmit culture, traditions, and identity (Pherali, 2016; Pherali & al, 2022). MEHE pushed for schooling refugees separated from the other students, yet, insisted on the Lebanese curriculum and learning material “for sovereignty reasons” (Brun & Shuyab 2021). Therefore, education has a direct impact on the reproduction of unfair structures through marginalization and ‘psycho-cultural factors of categorization’ (Pherali & al, 2022) that objectify groups by politicizing their identity. This process makes power hermetic, and those without power aren’t considered legitimate to speak up, advocate, or open dialogue, as they don’t have the tools brought by formal education. In that sense, education plays a negative role of perpetrator, in the way it shapes social capabilities, maintains socio-economic divisions to the benefit of the elite, and can fuel political tensions and conflict.

The objective is to consider how can education for Refugees can be a tool for Liberation and a Peacebuilder. However, refugee education, specifically in the context of humanitarian aid, is apolitical and neutral, following the values of impartiality marketed by the aiding countries in development interventions (Sözer, 2019). Learners are homogenized as one group whose nature is the status of refugee and receive schooling as a tool for development and the improvement of the future by increasing opportunities and employability, and therefore encouraging the return to the country of origin, or participation in the country’s economy. The refugee status is considered a ‘universal humanitarian subject’ (Malkki, 1996 cited in Moghli, 2022) ‘an apolitical and de-historicized figure, reduced to the role of aid beneficiary’. There is a transfer of responsibility from the political entities to communities to ‘save themselves’ (MacKinnon & Derickson, 2013), illustrated by the concept of ‘resilience’ that infiltrated debates on how to contribute to a more equitable society, and became a key-word in the education and conflict sector. Indeed, resilience is an important concept for international peacebuilding agendas and has oriented shifts in the conceptualization of peacebuilding through humanitarian aid (Shah, Paulson & Couch, 2020). The concept has been employed by the international community to reorient responsibility on communities and individuals affected by emergencies. This discourse depoliticizes education and the role it plays in dealing with crisis and rebuilding. It creates an uncritical and apolitical education that disconnects students from processes of social justice, liberation, and critical thinking. It furthers away any hope for transformation and systemic change, instead, it pushes refugees to ’bounce back’, despite structural violence and systemic inequalities (Harrison 2013, 99 cited in Shah, Paulson & Couch, 2020).

Conclusion

This essay aims to understand how the education aid sector and discourses around schooling and empowerment, produced by hegemonic countries to developing countries, fail to change the global inequalities that they have perpetrated. Drawing on Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and the theory of false generosity, the attempts of groups to invest in aid without being willing to change structurally the system are understood as vicious circles of reproducing inequalities while producing a performative discourse that makes it seem like these disparities are being tackled when it’s not the case. The depoliticization in the development aid field of children’s equal rights for education as a means of systemic equality and equity is seen as a perpetrator of symbolic violence.

To strive for change, the awakening of critical consciousness through critical pedagogy to nourish reflection on power structures and systems of oppression is necessary. Education can be a liberator of the oppressed (Freire, 1970) and a tool for social transformation, if structures that provide education agree to involve a transformative learning process, dialogue, safe spaces, and inclusivity, where education as a liberator plays also the role of a peacebuilder, to strive for marginalized populations to change unjust structures, and build on identity and culture celebration.

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