STL & ECW Guidance Note: Embedding Violence Prevention and Response in Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crisis Settings

Globally, about 222 million school-aged children are affected by crises, of which 78.2 million are out of school. Eighty-four per cent of those out-of-school crisis-affected children and adolescents live in protracted crises.

Education not only plays a crucial role in providing a sense of normalcy and enhances children’s capabilities, but it also offers important physical, mental health, psychosocial and cognitive protection. Resuming educational and well-being activities as quickly as possible must be a critical priority in any humanitarian crisis.

But in order to fully fulfill this role, education systems and plans must incorporate critical violence prevention features and mechanisms that keep all learners and education personnel safe.

As enabling the environment requires a set of actions, incentives and accountability mechanisms, Safe to Learn (STL) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) have built on their comparative advantages and developed an operational guideline that explains how to mainstream violence prevention and response within education in emergencies and protracted crisis programmes (EiE/PC).

The joint STL-ECW guidance note – Embedding Violence Prevention and Response in Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crisis Settings – launched at a side event during the ECW High-Level Financing Conference, follows the operational stages of a project cycle and aims to support ECW grantees and other practitioners in the field to identify violence prevention entry points when developing their programmes. It also synthesizes information from available resources to provide a quick and easy-to-follow, step-by-step reference for professionals working in EiE/PC settings.

Whilst the guidance note does not replace formal training on violence prevention and response, it is meant to be an easy-to-use tool which enables a proactive approach towards preventing violence in and through schools when providing education services during emergencies and protracted crises.