ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of education in the establishment of peaceful and stable societies. It provides a historical account of the development of the field of education in emergencies (EiE), and to analyse the relationship of EiE to the broader sustainable development agenda. The chapter examines the concepts of violence and conflict in the context of sustainable development, and builds an understanding of the complexities of the relationship between education and violence, and education and conflict. As schools are key sites of socialisation, they are potential sites for the legitimisation of direct and structural violence through the teaching of harmful social and cultural norms, but they also have the potential to be sites for the fostering of values of social justice and the building of positive peace. Most education programming in post-conflict contexts is not being planned explicitly from a peacebuilding perspective and, conversely, peacebuilding processes often pay little attention to education sector reform.
