What Is Humanitarian Education And Does It Help Build Peace?
Chloe Bruce – Photo: Linkedin
08-07-2026 ~ Humanitarian organizations invest in education to promote safety, resilience, and social cohesion, but researchers continue to debate its long-term impact on conflict and human well-being.
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.” Read more
Why Do Societies Normalize Harm To Children In War, Poverty, And Public Policy?
07-06-2026 ~ From war and environmental disaster to poverty and public policy, children face systemic harm that societies often fail to recognize—and can choose to change.
Few ideas command more universal agreement than the belief that children must be protected. Across cultures, religions, and political traditions, they are regarded as uniquely deserving of care, safety, and opportunity. Yet a glaring contradiction emerges when we look closely at the conditions under which millions of children actually live.
Around the world, childhood is routinely fractured by war, hunger, pollution, displacement, and poverty. Even within the United States, children face food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, environmental hazards, failing infrastructure, and unequal educational opportunities. We usually discuss these realities as separate crises—economic, political, or environmental. Rarely do we recognize them as interconnected symptoms of a larger pattern.
To a child, however, these bureaucratic distinctions matter little. The consequences accumulate in bodies, minds, and futures. This reality forces an uncomfortable question: if societies profess such deep concern for children, why does so much preventable harm persist? Why are conditions we would find intolerable in an individual case so easily accepted when they occur at scale?
The answer is not necessarily a lack of empathy. It is something more troubling: many forms of harm to children have become normalized. They persist not because societies openly endorse them, but because they have been quietly absorbed into the ordinary operation of institutions, policies, and social systems.
Consider how many of the gravest threats to children are discussed. War is typically analyzed in terms of territory, security, military strategy, or geopolitical interests. National debt is debated in the context of budgets, interest rates, and fiscal policy. Environmental disasters are measured through property loss, infrastructure damage, and economic costs. Immigration enforcement is discussed in terms of law, borders, and political conflict.
Yet children often experience these events differently. They encounter them not as policy questions but as disruptions to safety, stability, health, education, and belonging. The consequences can persist long after the original crisis has faded from public attention. Different in form, these crises share a common feature: the well-being of children is rarely the measure by which they are judged, even when children bear a disproportionate share of the harm.
Around the world, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Whether the source is armed conflict, environmental disaster, economic instability, forced migration, or political repression, children frequently bear consequences they neither created nor can control. The details vary from one society to another, but the underlying dynamic remains the same: the costs of collective failures are often carried by those with the least power to influence them.
Public expressions of concern for children are nearly universal. News reports on wars, famines, environmental disasters, and epidemics routinely highlight the number of children harmed. Yet these acknowledgments often remain symbolic rather than transformative. Concern is expressed, tragedy is recognized, and attention moves on, while the underlying conditions that produced the harm remain largely unchanged.
The suffering of children is often invoked as evidence of a crisis, yet it rarely becomes the standard by which the success or failure of public responses is judged.
The same pattern appears in the United States. While hunger is often debated through the lens of federal budgets and public spending, millions of children quietly rely on school meal programs as their primary source of daily nutrition. Similarly, environmental contamination is routinely assessed using regulatory thresholds and economic costs, even as emerging research documents developmental harms from pollution across childhood and adolescence. Immigration enforcement, too, is often discussed through the abstract language of borders and legality, while children endure the immediate fear, instability, and trauma of family separation. In each instance, the language of policy can obscure the lived realities of childhood.
The Evidence Is Already There
We do not lack evidence. We lack organized will. Year after year, global organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Oxfam document the scale of systemic harm inflicted on children. The data is neither hidden nor ambiguous. Yet a profound disconnect persists between public concern and institutional action. Societies routinely pass sweeping laws, sign international declarations, and voice collective outrage, but consistently fail to build the systems needed to turn concern into protection.
A stark, contemporary manifestation of this gap is found in the 2026 Global Out of the Shadows Index. Developed by Economist Impact alongside Together for Girls, the index benchmarked how 60 countries address child sexual abuse and exploitation. Its findings point to a familiar pattern. Many countries have developed legal protections for children, but far fewer have built the institutions, systems, and public commitments needed to make those protections meaningful in everyday life. Across the global index, governance and prevention emerged as the absolute weakest areas.
This points to a difficult truth. The failure to protect children is rarely a failure of knowledge. We know far more about the causes of harm than we did a generation ago. We know how poverty affects development. We know how violence shapes mental health. We know how environmental toxins accumulate in growing bodies. The question is no longer whether the evidence exists. The question is why societies continue to tolerate conditions that produce predictable harm.
The pattern extends across national boundaries and political systems. Wealthy countries and lower-income countries alike often struggle to translate concern into prevention. Some fail because of limited resources. Others fail despite having substantial resources at their disposal. The recurring challenge is not simply capacity, but the willingness to organize institutions around children’s long-term well-being.
Part of the answer lies in the unequal conditions into which children are born. Long before children make choices of their own, geography, family circumstances, health, environment, and social status begin shaping the opportunities available to them. Read more
The Public Isn’t Budging On ICE’s Immigrant Detention Policies
Sonali Kolhatkar
07-03-2026 ~ Around the nation, citizens are resisting the mass warehousing of immigrants—and finding some success.
As the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency rapidly expands its carceral powers, immigrant detention centers around the United States have been facing relentless public scrutiny. It appears the pressure campaigns are finally having an impact as some centers are shutting down. While this doesn’t mean the Trump administration’s draconian anti-immigrant agenda is winding down anytime soon, it signals the importance of sustaining grassroots opposition.
The most significant closure—one that hasn’t garnered nearly enough media coverage—is Florida’s so-called Alligator Alcatraz. When it first opened in July 2025, the sprawling, hastily built complex located in the midst of South Florida’s Everglades became one of the ugliest symbols of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Only a year later, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced it would be closed.
During its short lifespan, the center was notorious for its shockingly inhumane treatment of detained people, including torture and abuse. Republican Party officials, meanwhile, showed support for the center by selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, and Trump supporters were seen taking selfies before a large sign emblazoned with the prison’s nickname.
The detention center was named by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who boasted that the people being held there had “nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” and that the facility was cheap to run because it was surrounded by alligators and pythons. While the Trump administration has claimed it wants to remove people from the country in a way that will “maximize efficiency, minimize costs,” it turns out Alligator Alcatraz was a money sink.
DeSantis justified the center’s $1.2 billion price tag, saying it had served its purpose because 21,000 people had been detained there at various times over the past year before being deported. But, compared to the average cost of holding people in immigrant detention, Alligator Alcatraz was more than 20 times as expensive.
Trump’s project of rounding people up just because he can costs taxpayers massive amounts of money during a time when ordinary Americans are suffering financially and seeing essential service cuts. The US Government Accountability Office released a report in June 2026 stating that millions of dollars were wasted on operating ICE detention centers.
While the Florida center was likely shut down in response to an environmental lawsuit, other immigrant prisons are also under scrutiny across the country. The most high-profile fight is currently playing out in Newark, New Jersey, where Delaney Hall has been the focus of a protest by hundreds of detained people engaging in hunger and labor strikes on the inside and public pressure from activists and family members on the outside.
Just like state-run prisons where incarcerated people are forced to work under harsh circumstances for extremely low pay, conditions inside immigrant detention centers like Delaney Hall are documented as being tantamount to slave labor. Private companies like GEO Group, which runs Delaney, pocket the profits made through immigrant indentured labor.
“Delaney Hall and GEO Group [detention centers] generally are known for having really horrific conditions,” said Rachel Marandett, a detention attorney at the American Friends Service Committee’s New Jersey Immigrant Rights Program. Marandett cited severe medical neglect, in addition to inedible food and foul-tasting water, among the conditions that detained people are forced to endure. “They’re treated as if they’re less than human,” she said.
Such conditions are systemic. Across the US, people detained by ICE report widespread medical neglect, as per an investigation by KFF Health News and the Associated Press. Physicians for Human Rights released a new report concluding that in-custody deaths between January 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026, jumped dramatically to nearly four times the rate under the Biden administration. And, in what might be considered a de facto admission of routine violations of the law and people’s rights, immigrant prison contractors are seeking similar immunity from prosecution that police have long (undeservedly) enjoyed.
There is no legal requirement for the government to detain undocumented people who do not have a criminal record. Setting aside the fact that many immigrants are unlawfully detained—such as a Newark city employee named Rafael Rubio, who was arrested and detained for 158 days when he appeared at a routine interview as part of his asylum application. He was finally released after city officials mobilized to push for his release—the decision to imprison them is a discretionary one. “Instead of only detaining people that the government has some actual reason to argue are a flight risk or a danger, [ICE is] detaining everyone and just claiming that these interests apply to every single non-citizen,” said Marandett. Read more
What Is There To Celebrate On The 250th Anniversary Of The United States of America?
02-07-2026 ~ On July 4, 2026, the United States of America turns 250 years old. Should the Left celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence? After all, this is a nation with a very dark and ugly past — with racism, genocide, and imperialism deeply embedded in its psyche.
Surely Native Americans have no reason to celebrate. The history of the United States government’s treatment of Native Americans is one of cruelty, oppression, and extermination. Leaving aside the 56 million indigenous people that were killed by European settlers across the Americas by 1600, since its independence in 1776, the U.S. government has launched more than 1500 attacks against various indigenous people, slaughtering them, and taking their lands. Native Americans in the U.S. continue to face oppression, poverty, and discrimination, and rank near the bottom of all other groups in terms of health, education, and employment.
What about blacks? Do they have a reason to celebrate a nation that denied them their humanity for much of those 250 years, while they continue to experience racial discrimination to this day? Racism against blacks remains very much widespread in the Good Ol’ USA.
Should American women have a reason to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday? They have been treated as second-class citizens until fairly recently, and while many countries around the world have or had female leaders, it is a widely shared belief that the U.S. is still not ready for a woman president.
If anything, a major milestone like the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence should be an opportunity to confront the nation’s dark and ugly past and reflect on what has gone wrong with U.S. democracy and what we can do about it. After all, isn’t it a tragic irony that the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, which is supposed to honor the principles of liberty and equality upon which the nation was allegedly founded, will take place with an administration in power whose own beliefs and actions embody the very tyrannical rule that the Declaration of Independence sought to overthrow?
What manner of national progress is this?
But history is not a linear progression. Nor is it guided by the realization of freedom and rationality, as Hegel thought. Human history moves in a spiral, and irrationality makes up a great part of human life and history. Moreover, not only does the value of ideals vary greatly (Nazism and imperialism were as potent ideals as those of democracy and self-determination), but there is usually a disconnect between ideals and political reality. Some of the lofty principles in the Declaration of Independence, such as “all men are created equal,” collided with the facts on the ground and, in fact, had a very narrow interpretation when they were written, as they applied only to white, propertied men.
Indeed, in 2026, we have a president who likes to govern like a king, or a dictator. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court has given Donald J. Trump king-like powers. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Trump 2.0 has demolished democracy by initiating a new age of authoritarian rule with civil and human rights rollbacks, weaponizing the federal government against the president’s political rivals, and unleashing a paramilitary squad of fascist thugs into communities across the nation. It is also hardly surprising that Trump has become the most corrupt president in U.S. history. He is exploiting shamelessly the highest office in the land to enrich himself and his family.
Trump’s enablers extend beyond today’s Supreme Court, which has moved so far rightward that it qualifies as the most reactionary in the nation’s modern history. It includes the plutocrats, media conglomerates, evangelical Christians, and pro-Israel political networks. Retail corporations, major law firms, and academic institutions capitulated with such ease to Trump’s bullying tactics that they made a mockery of liberal ideals. Read more
- Page 3 of 3
- previous page
- 1
- 2
- 3