Still ‘the conscience of humanity’? UNESCO’s vision of education for peace, sustainable development and global citizenship

Focus and rationale

In 2015, 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its accompanying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Education for peace, sustainable development and global citizenship is enshrined in SDG Target 4.7, which focuses on equipping learners with ‘knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development’. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has characterised SDG 4.7 as especially pertinent to ‘the social, humanistic and moral purposes of education’ and ‘the transformative aspirations’ of the SDGs (UNESCO 2016b, 288). However, UNESCO’s work on ‘transformative education’ has increasingly focused on interventions to ‘future proof’ education, whether related to climate change or digital transformation, rather than contesting and transforming dominant structural forces and cultural ideologies that hinder meaningful responses to the interconnected challenges of our time (see Bryan and Mochizuki 2023, for a detailed discussion of the ‘hijacking’ of transformative education).¹ Meanwhile, the gravity of wider political, social and institutional challenges to promoting peace and sustainability continues to intensify. Amidst the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing ecological breakdown, widespread corrosion of democracy, economic crises, and violent conflict from Ukraine to Sudan and Yemen to Myanmar, the obstacles to creating more peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable societies appear more daunting than ever.

On 5 April 2023, on the occasion of the International Day of Conscience, the Director-General of UNESCO remarked that the mission of the organisation is ‘to bring about a collective conscience in humanity’ – the ‘intellectual and moral solidarity’ cited in the Constitution of UNESCO – ending by declaring, ‘It is with confidence [that] … UNESCO assumes its role as “the conscience of the world community”, as put by Jawaharlal Nehru’ (UNESCO 2023b, 1). UNESCO has long been seen as ‘the conscience of humanity’ – or, as Nehru originally put it in 1956, ‘of mankind’ (UNESCO 1985, 18). Founded in 1945, the organisation’s constitution defined its mission as ‘to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations’ (UNESCO 1945).

Since its foundation, but especially over the past three decades, UNESCO has pursued its humanistic agenda in the changing landscape of education governance. The 1990s witnessed the World Conference on Education for All (EFA), held in Jomtien, Thailand, and the launch of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The EFA agenda – a precursor to SDG 4-Education 2030 – and PISA have subsequently allowed the World Bank and OECD to play dominant roles in framing global education policy debate, notwithstanding the intensified critique of their policies and practices from academics and civil society advocates (Auld, Rappleye, and Morris 2019; Mundy and Verger 2015). Models of educational governance promoted by these organisations, and increasingly by other multilateral agencies, typically demand minute assessment of educational ‘performance’ against quantitative benchmarks. Fostering an emphasis in policymaking and curriculum development on ‘skills’ that are readily measurable and comparable, PISA has promoted a largely economistic interpretation of education’s goals (Auld and Morris 2019; see also Muller 2018). The application of metrics has recently been extended to ‘non-cognitive’ skills, ‘social and emotional skills’ (Chernyshenko, Kankaraš, and Drasgow 2018; OECD 2021), and ‘global competencies’ (OECD 2018). But questions arise as to how far ‘social and emotional skills’ or ‘global competencies’ are valued for enhancing productivity and harmony within a fundamentally unaltered status quo, or for fostering the capacity or inclination to critique the established order and promote positive societal transformation (Ledger et al. 2019; Auld and Morris 2019; Mochizuki, Vickers, and Bryan 2022; Mochizuki 2023).

In addition to the threat posed by a narrowly technocratic ‘global governance’ agenda, further challenges today confront defenders of a humanistic vision of education. Over the past 50 years, UNESCO has released three seminal reports on education: Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow (Faure et al. 1972); Learning: The treasure within (Delors et al. 1996); and Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (ICFE 2021). The 1972 Faure Report, widely seen as a definitive statement of UNESCO’s humanistic outlook (Elfert and Draxler 2022), articulated a ‘utopian’ conceptualisation of education’s intrinsic value to a fulfilling life and its importance to underpinning the dignity and agency of citizens (Elfert 2019). As Biesta puts it, the Faure Report associated UNESCO with a vision in which ‘the integrity of education itself is acknowledged and education is not reduced to a mere instrument for delivering particular agendas’ (Biesta 2022, 655). This strand of educational rhetoric is still visible in the later landmark reports published by UNESCO headquarters in 1996 and 2021. However, some recent efforts to challenge human exceptionalism and ontological individualism in the context of the climate crisis have directed criticism explicitly at what is portrayed as UNESCO’s privileging of ‘Western’ Enlightenment approaches (Rappleye and Komatsu 2022) and its emphasis on ‘student-centred learning’ (Komatsu, Rappleye, and Silova 2021). Arguments informed by decolonial perspectives have recently gained some traction in global education discourse – and are partially embraced in UNESCO’s Futures of Education report (ICFE 2021) – prompting some scholars to advance a counter-critique on both ethical and political grounds (Elfert 2023; Vickers 2020).

UNESCO’s education work, we argue, thus confronts at least two major tensions today: a relentless drive for metrics and the associated reduction of education to ‘skilling’; and intellectual attempts to challenge human exceptionalism and individualism that call radically into question some core assumptions of humanist education (see, for example, Silova 2021). In this special issue of Compare, we focus specifically on debates surrounding SDG 4.7, widely seen as closely aligned with UNESCO’s longstanding humanistic concerns. Our overarching aim is to assess what discourses, programmes and initiatives associated with SDG 4.7 implementation tell us about the broader socio-political and intellectual contexts in which UNESCO operates today, and the extent to which associated trends and pressures are leading to a reshaping – or, as some would see it, a distortion – of its central mission. How has UNESCO, confronted with the challenges posed by the changing nature of global educational governance, sought to reassert or defend its agenda-setting role? Do decolonial perspectives offer a useful critique of UNESCO’s education work or jeopardise its mission ‘to bring about a collective conscience in humanity’? In this brief introductory essay, we provide an overview of the various contributions to this special issue, noting how they engage with these questions, and summarising the conclusions to be drawn concerning the challenges facing UNESCO’s foundational commitment to humanism and its role as ‘the conscience of humanity’.

This special issue

This collection begins with a trio of articles analysing key themes or preoccupations of UNESCO’s SDG 4.7 agenda. In an examination of attempts to develop ‘indicators’ for tracking implementation of SDG 4.7, Brockwell, Mochizuki and Sprague (2022) argue that the problems begin with the target’s original definition, which constitutes a somewhat loose assemblage of worthy objectives, vaguely worded:

By 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development. (UN 2015)

Given the institutional context of the UN system, and the inherently contentious nature of the values encompassed by ‘sustainability’, a certain looseness and imprecision was arguably inevitable. However, combined with pressures to develop metrics for measuring progress towards all SDGs, this imprecision has resulted in the development of a set of indicators and assessment tools for SDG 4.7 that are not fit for purpose. In response, Brockwell, Mochizuki and Sprague propose an alternative ‘Inside-Out’ strategy for assessing SDG 4.7, grounded in inductive, intersubjective and value-based approaches appropriate for addressing the Target’s transformative aspirations. They present a case study of this ‘Inside-Out’ approach applied to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) of Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF).²

The second article, by Christodoulou (2023), examines one thematic focus of UNESCO’s work on SDG 4.7: its efforts to prevent violent extremism. Since 2015, UNESCO has advocated preventing violent extremism through education (PVE-E), under the framework of global citizenship education (GCED). PVE-E has been formally endorsed by the UNESCO leadership, extensively discussed in regional and international conferences and workshops, and elaborated in three key publications: a Teacher’s Guide (UNESCO 2016c), a Guide for Policy-makers (UNESCO 2017), and a Youth-Led Guide (UNESCO MGIEP, 2017b). Analysing these documents with an eye to UNESCO’s organisational politics, Christodoulou identifies various interpretations of PVE-E and seeks to explain who favours which version, and why. In doing so, she exposes the normative values and ideological assumptions underpinning these varying representations. The picture that emerges is of a UNESCO whose norm-setting power is increasingly fragmented and challenged.

Worth noting here is the apparent arbitrariness with which particular initiatives have been associated by UNESCO with SDG 4.7; where, for example, is ‘peace education’? In its Framework for Action on SDG 4 (or Education 2030), UNESCO (2016a) refers to ‘peace education’ only once (11) and makes no reference to it in the paragraphs focusing on SDG 4.7 (20–21). Aside from the pre-existing programmes and organisational structures at the UNESCO headquarters which shaped the particular interpretations of SDG 4.7, one plausible explanation for neglect of peace education is the growing traction of psychologising approaches in UNESCO’s education work. Approaches to violence or ‘extremism’ that focus on the psychology or ‘social and emotional’ state of individuals – the ‘radicalisation’ of certain individuals – depart from peace education, involving concern with how civic agency shapes the public realm. Put another way, state actors uncomfortable with the principles of active citizenship may favour initiatives emphasising the pacification of individuals, rather than the messy, collective, intrinsically political business of peace-building (Higgins and Novelli 2020).

The rise of psychologising approaches is also reflected in another thematic focus of UNESCO’s SDG 4.7 programmes that relates to well-being and happiness, particularly marked by growing advocacy for social-emotional learning (SEL). Bryan (2022) analyses how UNESCO’s promotion of SEL has become intertwined with a behaviouralist and psychologising approach to learning widely seen as ‘scientifically’ authoritative. She shows how the organisation’s growing emphasis – notably through the work of the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) – on digital SEL and ‘brain-based’ approaches relates to a wider ‘neuroliberal’ (Whitehead et al. 2018) turn. These trends, Bryan stresses, carry profound implications for UNESCO’s status as the ‘conscience of humanity’. She argues that UNESCO’s embrace of ‘SEL for SDGs’ is an attempt to assert legitimacy in a global governance landscape profoundly shaped by corporate interests, techno-‘philanthropy’, and neoliberal ideology. The privileging of biological and neuropsychological explanations for complex social and political problems is congenial to many vested interests, for whom the focus on ‘brains’ promises painless solutions to pressing global challenges. By infusing UNESCO’s global citizenship work with a depoliticised, individualistic and neuroliberally inflected vision of the ‘conscious human brain’, argues Bryan, SEL can forestall political debate, distract from socio-economic injustice, and undermine meaningful civic agency.

UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGIEP) has been especially prominent in promoting SEL and digital technology-based solutions to all manner of educational problems (Mochizuki, Vickers, and Bryan 2022; Mochizuki 2023). In his article here, Vickers (2022) traces how and why MGIEP has embraced this agenda so enthusiastically, analysing its record from global, national (i.e. Indian) and institutional perspectives. He concludes that MGIEP’s focus on neuroscience and positive psychology, and neglect of curricular content, reflects a broader trend towards the depoliticisation of education policy debate both globally and specifically within India, where it aligns with the authoritarian nationalism of the governing party. Echoing Bryan’s observations on SEL, Vickers shows how an emphasis on individual empowerment or psychological ‘readjustment’ deflects critique away from the forces and structures that obstruct progress towards SDG 4.7. Meanwhile, as MGIEP’s Rethinking Schooling report (UNESCO MGIEP, 2017a) itself demonstrates, education systems across much of Asia (as elsewhere) continue to be dominated by impulses at odds with the humanist vision that UNESCO has traditionally espoused.

Turning from India to Thailand, Tan and Vickers (2024) examine a rather different instance of the appropriation of education for sustainable development (ESD), this time under the banner not of science but of culture. Central to the elaboration of what counts as ESD in Thailand (e.g. in curricula for economics and social studies) is the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP), which is officially portrayed as a distinctively Thai ethos. SEP is touted as resolving issues ranging from human rights to the environment and peace through the construction of a utopian Thai Buddhist moral community. Thai education policy documents reflect the syncretism of efforts to preserve Thai traditions and identity, on the one hand, while enhancing the country’s economic competitiveness on the other. However, as Tan and Vickers show, educational initiatives associated with SEP use allusions to ‘Thai’ wisdom to throw the cloak of ‘tradition’ over a modernising agenda that is labour-exploitative and politically and socially conservative. SEP fails to advance a coherent definition of sustainable consumption, address inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power, or promote a meaningful vision of human interconnectedness that extends beyond Thailand’s borders. The promotion of SEP as a vehicle for uniquely ‘Thai’ values, the authors contend, in effect seeks to legitimate a project of internal colonisation by invoking the threat of Western neo-colonial globalisation.

The shadow of ‘colonial Western modernity’, real or imagined, looms over two further articles in this special issue, in which Macintyre, de Souza and Wals (2023) and Bengtsson (2022) draw on critique by environmental education scholars of claims for ESD’s ‘transformative’ potential. This critique has portrayed ESD as imbued with a profound anthropocentrism, and as promoting visions or models rooted in Western culture that are of questionable relevance to non-Western societies (Kopnina 2012).

Macintyre, de Souza and Wals (2023) provide a Latin American perspective on ESD, focusing on transformative and participatory learning in community contexts. With a long history of pioneering work in critical pedagogy, Latin America provides fertile ground for exploring the potential of alternative forms of education to address challenges inherent in conventional modern approaches. They begin by providing an overview of key educational currents in contemporary Latin America, before presenting two case studies – one from Colombia, the other from Brazil – which explore grassroots initiatives in community settings. On the basis of these case studies, they propose an integrative model for fostering educational approaches conducive to ‘decolonial and regenerative praxis’. This exemplifies, they argue, how strategies for regenerative decolonisation rooted in Latin American experience might inform global ESD programmes.

Returning to Asia, Bengtsson (2022) portrays Western ‘coloniality’ as profoundly implicated in the articulation of ‘criticality’ in global policy frameworks on ESD, and in its re-conceptualisation in the specific context of Viet Nam. He argues that interpretations of criticality in education depend on cultural and historical context. A comparative perspective, Bengtsson contends, enables us to explore whether such a thing as universal or decontextualised ‘criticality’ exists at all or, alternatively, whether ‘criticality’ is culturally negotiated, contextually embedded and contingent. His argument thus connects to the ongoing debate within the environmental education field concerning the need, as many scholars see it, to challenge the ‘hegemonic’ status of purportedly ‘Western’ perspectives or modes of reasoning by drawing on traditions or outlooks rooted in non-Western cultures.

However, in their analysis of ESD and ASEAN citizenship education in Vietnam’s neighbour, Cambodia, Ogisu and Hagai (2023) offer a rather different perspective on the politics of clashes between transnational educational agendas and the ‘localising’ efforts of national authorities. They demonstrate how the regime of Cambodia’s authoritarian ruler, Hun Sen, has ‘watered down and depoliticised’ both ESD and efforts to promote consciousness of transnational ‘ASEAN-ness’ (Ogisu and Hagai 2023, 15). While signalling alignment with these ideals is seen as useful for maintaining ties with regional neighbours and multilateral donors, ensuring only superficial engagement minimises any potential threat to the regime’s grip on Cambodian society and politics. While some might interpret this as a triumph for ‘indigeneity’ over Western ‘coloniality’, to the extent that it obstructs pedagogical efforts to enhance citizens’ autonomy, dignity and agency, argue Ogisu and Hagai, it is hard to divine any benefit to ordinary Cambodians.

Significant here is a factor to which no contributors to this special issue devote substantial attention: the influence of China. Ogisu and Hagai (2023) note that, in the case of Cambodia, any embrace of ASEAN citizenship had ‘completely faded’ by 2019, even while rhetorical engagement with ESD (albeit superficial) increased (15). Meanwhile, the ministry increasingly focused on STEM, informed by an educational agenda both narrowly economistic and intensely nationalistic. This dilution of any talk of transnational citizenship, intensifying nationalism and overwhelming emphasis on STEM mirrors education policy in contemporary China (Vickers and Pinar 2021), and coincides with growing Chinese influence over Cambodia, described as ‘China’s leverage point on ASEAN’ (Florick 2021). The implications of growing Chinese influence on UNESCO’s education sector work, reflected in the establishment in Shanghai in 2023 of a new Category 1 institute on STEM education, are discussed elsewhere by the editors of this special issue (Mochizuki and Vickers 2024).³

Where next for UNESCO and its educational agenda?

Taken together, the eight contributions to this special issue shed important new light on the recent evolution of UNESCO’s humanistic vision – as embodied in SDG 4.7 – and its institutional priorities. These papers illuminate the role played in this process by the politics of global educational governance, by the ascendency of psychologising approaches, by political factors at the national level, and by the influence of decolonial critiques of purportedly ‘Western’ or ‘Enlightenment’ epistemological and ontological models of self, education and development. The analysis offered here furthers our understanding of the complex challenges facing UNESCO and other actors (transnational, national, or local) seeking to promote the ‘sustainable development’ agenda, and of tensions and contradictions besetting the interpretation of that agenda in the first place.

As the articles in this special issue make clear, UNESCO today faces daunting challenges to advancing a humanistic vision of education. Although its most recent seminal report on education (ICFE 2021) upholds such a vision, UNESCO’s future-oriented work, alongside its work on SDG 4.7, also reflects a depoliticisation of ESD and GCED (Yliniva, Bryan, and Brunila 2024). Providing perspective and context to calls for realising education’s ‘transformative’ potential constitutes a central challenge for UNESCO as it seeks to reassert its relevance to global education policy debates. UNESCO today faces a struggle to defend or revive ‘the emancipatory call of the Faure report to “learn and think freely and critically”’; in that struggle, it contends not only with an economistic drive to reduce ideas such as criticality or lifelong learning to ‘a narrow functionality’ (Elfert and Draxler 2022, 650), but also with claims that such concepts are themselves irredeemably ‘colonial’ or parochially ‘Western’. Countering such claims means rearticulating and reaffirming commitments to ethical universalism and shared humanity, while engaging meaningfully with a critique of onto-epistemic assumptions underpinning UNESCO’s education sector work and addressing the contribution of culture to ‘sustainable development’ in terms that move beyond a crude dichotomisation of ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’.

Notes

1. For example, recent UNESCO advocacy for education for sustainable development focuses on a ‘Greening Education Partnership’ for ‘getting every learner climate-ready’, making education systems ‘more resilient to climate change to create safe and climate-proof schools’ and empowering learners ‘with the skills required for inclusive and sustainable economic development within the context of the transition toward digital and green economies’ (UNESCO, n.d.; also see UNESCO 2023a, 2023c).

2. TESF was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund through the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council Network Plus scheme. It was coordinated by scholars at the University of Bristol and works with partners in India, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

3. China’s efforts to engage with – and shape – global debate over ‘sustainable development’ are analysed by Hansen, Li, and Svarverud (2018).