Education from the Bottom Up: UNICEF's Education Programme in Somalia

Abstract

Provision of education and other basic services in fragile and conflict-affected contexts can be an important means of building positive peace. However, service provision suffers when government is absent or too weak to carry out this function. In such circumstances, the peace-building function of education may be lost unless other means of provision are developed. UNICEF supported education in Somalia in 1996–2010 as part of its mandate. Though it was not the only international agency working in education in Somalia, UNICEF took a leading role for much of the early crisis period. Facing variable instability and a lack of functioning government, especially in the south-west (central/south zone), UNICEF took advantage of shifting opportunities to educate thousands of children and adults. The agency's longstanding presence and focus on children, families and communities gave it unusual credibility. Close partnerships with local NGOs permitted outreach to diverse communities and capacity to exploit emergent opportunities. Instructional content provided basic skills; negotiated with stakeholders, it was suitable for both public and Qu'ranic schools. UNICEF varied activities according to local stability and partner capacity. Basic components were introduced first, additional components added as conditions stabilized and capacity grew. Efforts were evaluated and programme elements revised. Unable to rely on central government, UNICEF engaged flexibly with sub-national governing entities including nascent zonal governments to support educational provision.

Introduction

There is a surprising intimacy between education, peace-building and conflict.¹ On the one hand, in the popular imagination and discourse, education is generally understood as a good thing. Education can help build skills for employment or conflict resolution. It provides hope, a positive initiative helping to build ‘positive peace’.² Education is commonly prescribed for many of the ills of the world, including conflict. It is suggested as a means to help individuals, communities and societies learn to live together.³ The UN Secretary General's Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) identifies global citizenship as its third priority: ‘Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies.’⁴

Education is understood to have two faces.⁵ The positive face includes programmes aimed explicitly at promoting peace, that is, peace education. Education can also help reduce conflict with broad provision of educational opportunity, promotion of cultural and linguistic tolerance and by ‘disarming history’.⁶ However, too little education, inequitable distribution of education and the ‘wrong kind of education' can contribute to conflict.⁷ Education's negative face ‘shows itself in the uneven distribution of education to create or preserve privilege, the use of education as a weapon of cultural repression, and the production or doctoring of textbooks to promote intolerance’.⁸ Recognizing the potential for harm, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) has worked over the past several years to promote ‘conflict-sensitive programming’, programmes that do not exacerbate conflict. To serve its positive peace-building function, education must at a minimum be broadly available, and not the exclusive prerogative of particular groups.

Education can also serve a state-building function.⁹ The provision of basic services such as education demonstrates the capacity and good political will of the state, or other governing entities. It helps to legitimate the provider (and likely to train those to whom education is provided to think in ways that support the ends as well as the legitimacy of the governing entity). This is commonly seen in non-state actors who seek to establish their credibility, often with great success, by providing basic services where the state may not (e.g. Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prior to 2010). The state-building function of education can take place in a variety of ways, such as building trust in institutions and those that support them, developing cooperation among groups and developing understanding of state structures among the people. When the state is conceived simply in terms of a central government, the state-building capacities of education are limited to those that support development of central government. However, when state-building is understood more broadly, the state-building functions of education can also be seen more broadly.¹⁰

International leaders call education a human right and a responsibility of the state.¹¹ Yet what is to happen when the state collapses? As the quintessential failed state,¹² Somalia is an important case for discussions of state fragility and failure¹³ and of the possibilities of education in such contexts. Given education's role as a potential state-building and peace-building endeavour, it seems well worth looking at the provision of educational services under conditions of extreme state fragility and collapse. Current research literature discusses education in Somalia,¹⁴ but offers little insight into the ways in which educational services may be delivered under such conditions, nor does it discuss ways in which education can serve potential state-building functions in the absence of formal state structures.

The primary contribution of the case study is the detailing of ways in which an international agency, in this case UNICEF, worked to deliver basic education services under such conditions, where many of the usual prerequisites for development work are absent. The agency was able to do so by organizing its operations flexibly so as to respond to shifting opportunities as they arose, by working with a range of local partners who had a stake in the operations of schools and by developing components of an education programme that could be added or dropped as conditions changed. The case draws on primary documents from UNICEF and the government(s) of Somalia, selected interviews and correspondence and secondary literature on education in fragile states and those affected by conflict. Documentation was challenging, as the research literature on provision of services during the Somali conflict is extremely limited. Conversely, the study's contribution is the elaboration of strategies used to begin to build positive peace through educational provision in an extremely fragile context. Still there are limitations to the heavy reliance on agency sources.

Context

Located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia is the lost orphan of East Africa. Arguably, Somalia is not a single country under a fragile state but rather three regions with varying levels of functioning statehood and fragility: the north-west zone (NWZ), the self-declared ‘Republic of Somaliland’; the north-east zone (NEZ), the semi-autonomous ‘Puntland State of Somalia’; and the central/south zone (CSZ).

From 1991 Somalia experienced nearly two decades of civil unrest and war. The civil war and subsequent collapse of central government and its institutions left Somalia one of the world's poorest countries. The Somali people were deeply divided. During the conflict, villages and cities were indiscriminately bombed and looted, and basic services, such as water, health care and education collapsed. By 1998, the average life expectancy of a Somali was 43, the under-5 mortality rate exceeded 25 per cent. Even prior to the war, Somalia had one of the world's lowest adult literacy rates. UNICEF reported in its State of the World's Children 1998 that literacy rates for men and women in Somalia were 36 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.¹⁵

Approximately 60 per cent of Somalia's population is semi-nomadic pastoralists, organized into traditional clans who mainly live a pastoral life. The Somalia area was lightly colonized by the Italians (in the south and north-east) and the British (in the north-west). For some Somalis, colonization fostered an interest in the West and modern world economy – and hence in Western schooling. But the British and Italian colonial administrations did little to penetrate the daily lives of the majority of people, or develop a national consciousness. The predominant cultural inclination was and is towards a traditional Islamic way of life, which represents diverse views towards formal schooling, especially of girls. Most children were schooled, if at all, in Koranic schools run by religious leaders in most communities.

In 1960, Somalia gained independence as a state with its capital in Mogadishu – but there was minimal actual integration. Merger of the two former protectorates led to an initial period of nation-building, but then the president was assassinated in 1969 and there was a bloodless coup in which Mohamed Siad Barre assumed leadership, establishing a military dictatorship under Marxist precepts.

The demise of the regime in 1990 led to loss of moral authority and popular support for the regime. By 1991, the country was in a state of civil war, with the dissolution of a functioning central state. In its place regions took three different political directions. In the north-west and north-east, established civil administrative structures provide a framework for implementation that has been lacking until recently in the CSZ. Somaliland has developed a functioning if fragile democracy. The Puntland has seen a strong leader with considerable legitimacy. And the central/south region centred around Mogadishu has been a contested zone with several tribes vying for leadership, though with a recent consolidation of authority claiming a national mandate.

As of August 2012, the Federal Republic of Somalia (FRS) is the official government of the nation as a whole. It is centred in Mogadishu, in the CSZ with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as president. The central government is working to build national institutions, even as the regional governments of Somaliland and Puntland remain in place, and are more or less active. The extent to which the FRS will assume authority over the Somaliland and the Puntland remains unclear.

Two decades without a functioning central government jeopardized provision of social services including education: unsafe schools; destruction of infrastructure and instructional materials; and vulnerable teachers. But the respective governments have devoted some energy towards revitalizing education. Alongside regional governments, a number of NGOs and international organizations have persisted; among them UNICEF, which is generally regarded as having made considerable headway both in providing services and laying critical groundwork for development of effective governance structures in the sector.

This case study overviews UNICEF's experience as it developed and adapted approaches to working in Somalia's fragile environment between 1991 and 2010. While its record is not perfect and UNICEF was not the only active international player, UNICEF remained the lead international agency supporting formal education services throughout this period of instability, conflict and collapse of central authority.

The formal education system remains among the least developed in the world. Still, it has moved from a condition of total collapse in 1991 to 2012, when over 700,000 children enrolled in school (primary gross enrolment ratio of 22 per cent), with considerable variation across regions. The majority of funding is external or community-based, yet by 2012 ministries of education were constituted in each of the three zones of Somalia and they have produced ambitious forward-looking sector plans.¹⁶ The country now receives funding from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). UNICEF played an important role in these achievements, due to its sensitivity to local context, its flexibility in programme responses, its willingness and ability to partner with available groups and agencies, its focus on helping the larger system get running and its commitment to inclusion.

Educational Development

As in many societies, Somali children have historically been instructed through informal oral traditions and practices. Somalia is an Islamic society and Islamic educational institutions remain prevalent. Most children attend Koranic schools instead or in addition to formal schooling. During the colonial period, the British introduced an English educational system in the north-west, and the Italians introduced an Italian system elsewhere. At independence, the country had 200 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, each with its own history and standards, various languages, curricula and teaching methods.¹⁷ By the early 1970s, an integrated formal school system was established with donor assistance with some 1,400 primary schools, perhaps as many as 60 secondary schools (some boarding schools providing access to rural children), several vocational-technical institutes, a national teacher education centre and a national university. Somali became a written language using the Latin alphabet, and a large-scale literacy programme was undertaken. By the mid-1970s, however, most Western assistance was abandoned when the new government developed close relations with the USSR.

In 1981, official statistics show 152,429 students enrolled in grades one to four in 729 primary schools, 34.1 per cent of whom were female. In the same year, 87,487 students were enrolled in intermediate education (grades five to eight) in 628 schools, of whom 38.7 per cent were female.¹⁸ By way of contrast, there were an estimated 5,480 Koranic schools in the country, enrolling students from 4 or 5 years old up to 14 years old, though most students, especially girls, left before then. Enrolments in the formal schools appear to have varied substantially. For example, see Table 1 for the reported range of first grade enrolments between 1975 and 1982.

TABLE 1 FIRST GRADE ENROLMENTS FROM 1975–76 TO 1981–82

Year	Enrolments
1975–76	133,605
1976–77	68,256
1977–78	41,631
1978–79	62,963
1979–80	48,272
1980–81	59,808
1981–82	47,507

Source: Ministry of National Planning, 1984.

The Ogaden war with Ethiopia in 1977–78 drew government resources from education to the point the system moved towards collapse. Enrolment dropped, schools were closed and teachers sought employment elsewhere. By 1990, only 600 schools remained open, enrolling 150,000 children.¹⁹ The nation plunged into conflict. By 1991, 90 per cent of the country's school buildings were destroyed, virtually no instructional materials were available and teachers and students had abandoned the educational process, many displaced by the conflict. For two years, Somalia had virtually no formal schooling.²⁰ In 1993, schools began to open, operated by local communities or teachers. Informal education committees were established in some areas. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and UNICEF began to reprint existing primary school textbooks and teachers’ guides. UNICEF provided in-service training for teachers and distributed school kits. International agencies and NGOs provided funding, training and supervision in some localities. Schools were rehabilitated by communities, international agencies and NGOs.²¹

Violence and instability continued, particularly in the CSZ. Yet communities, local and international NGOs and international agencies, particularly UNICEF, UNESCO's Programme of Education for Emergencies and Reconstruction (PEER) and others, continued to offer education in pockets of stability. As stability and security increased, enrolment rates grew.

 Table 2 shows enrolment rates by gender and zone and by enrolment status as indicated by the 2006 Somalia Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).²² In 2006 enrolment rates remain low, but more than half of all children are enrolled in formal school or Koranic school. Enrolment is higher among boys than girls and highest in Puntland.

TABLE 2 ENROLMENT STATUS OF CHILDREN BY GENDER AND ZONE

	Never enrolled	Enrolled formal school	Enrolled Koranic school	Total
Girls
Somaliland	43.8	41.9	14.3	100
Puntland	36.5	29.8	33.7	100
Central South	50.1	17.4	32.5	100
Total	46.9	25.5	27.7	100
Boys
Somaliland	31.2	54.6	14.2	100
Puntland	26.1	31.6	42.4	100
Central South	27.9	18.3	53.8	100
Total	28.6	29.4	42.0	100

Source: Moyi, ‘Who Goes to School’, 2012 p.165.

Still, Somalia has the world's lowest rates of educational participation. A majority of Somalis are illiterate. Female literacy rates are substantially lower than those of men.²³

During the civil war, much of Somalia faced conditions unconducive to educational development:

1. violence in many parts of the country and fragile peace elsewhere;

2. lack of a national unified government structure;

3. dispersed population and poor infrastructure (making logistics costly and complex);

4. a host of service-providing organizations with different strategies, missions and modes of operation, leading to gaps, duplication and competition;

5. low levels of basic skills in the population and lack of training infrastructure, resulting in poor service;

6. short timeframes for international assistance, due to instability and the emergency nature of much available assistance;

7. corresponding low level of ownership by Somalis of external projects.

At the same time, there were positive conditions as well. Somali communities long ago wearied of conflict and showed themselves eager to undertake development work when possible. In the vacuum of government service provision, NGOs and private providers emerged to provide local services. Most utilities, for example, are provided by non-state entities. NGOs in particular are often headed by women. As a consequence, a vibrant civil society emerged, an entrepreneurial environment that bodes well for sustainability. The range of civil society organizations means that services can reach and be managed at the local level. Clans provide a strong base of mutual aid and sharing, with certain traditional protections for the vulnerable. Koranic schools, which operated much like early childhood education centres, continued to function through the conflict and provide a legitimate, widely accepted institutional foundation for education. UNICEF and other agencies have had some success in broadening the curricula of such schools in collaboration with local leaders. Governmental structures emerged in Somaliland and Puntland, permitting longer-range planning and sustained development. Agencies working in Somalia have long recognized the need for coordination and taken steps to maximize cooperation and coverage. Conflict was neither constant nor everywhere, and there were many opportunities for local developments and initiative. Some researchers found that Somalis were often quite open to innovation.²⁴

UNICEF's Education Programme

UNICEF resumed work in Somalia in 1993, helping to rehabilitate school buildings, re-printing existing textbooks (in collaboration with UNESCO PEER) and provide school kits (very basic set of instructional materials enabling a teacher to teach). While these kits were useful in emergency contexts, parents and communities wanted more. In response, UNICEF initiated an education programme in Somalia in 1997.

The programme emphasized formal primary education. In addition, however, UNICEF developed non-formal educational programmes for out-of-school youth and children.²⁵ These programmes included a non-formal education initiative targeting nomadic children using Alternative Basic Education (ABE) materials, and an integrated Koranic school project in Puntland and Somaliland.

Given the effective absence of government during that time period, UNICEF used partnership-based strategies to provide services in local areas. Partnerships include work with communities; local and international NGOs; private business; and various local authorities and zonal governments.²⁶ Though pervasive, conflict and instability were not uniform. UNICEF implemented its programme as opportunities opened up during periods (or specific localities) of relative peace, as regional governments developed capacity and as new development agencies began work in the country.

UNICEF developed, tested and scaled-up a relatively standard package of interventions, but varied introduction of components according to partner capacity and ground conditions. The agency administered its programmes through zonal offices in each of the three zones as well as four sub-zonal offices in the CSZ. As a result, UNICEF provided services, directly or indirectly, in most of the country.²⁷

Initially delivering community-level services in response to the emergency, UNICEF increasingly supplemented this with work at the system level, coordinating activities with other government structures when possible and with NGOS and development agencies working in the country).²⁸

Components of the Education Programme

Over time, UNICEF developed a series of components, introduced at different times according to capacity, need and access. Components included the following.

School kits: UNICEF's initial response to the Somali conflict was provision of education kits in 1993. These kits contained a minimum set of instructional materials, designed to enable a teacher to teach in any safe environment. School kits were both welcomed and controversial. A 1998 review found that kits were of limited use in many circumstances and, having been sourced externally, not sustainable. As a result, revisions were made and a teachers/school kit was developed alongside a pupil kit for 40 children (including chalk, pencils, crayons, pens, slates and notebooks). Kits were initially distributed to all primary schools in 1999 and in subsequent years. They played an important role in starting up education initiatives during the crisis phase. However, as time went on, it became obvious that additional activities were necessary.²⁹

Curriculum and textbooks: By 1993, few schools were standing. Instructional materials were almost non-existent. Materials that did exist consisted of isolated textbooks from Somalia and elsewhere, in multiple languages, often outdated. Very few children or schools had access to a complete set of age- and language-appropriate textbooks. Initially, UNICEF together with UNESCO PEER copied existing textbooks for distribution and use. However, with awareness of the limitations of existing materials, UNICEF initiated a complete curriculum revision process for lower primary education. Twenty-four syllabi and textbooks were prepared for grades one to four in six subject areas – Somali language, Arabic, mathematics, science, social studies and Islamic studies. Curricular materials were developed to be used in Koranic schools and formal primary schools.³⁰

 UNICEF was committed to child-centred pedagogy, gender equity and an inclusive process where all points of view were welcomed. As a result, 40 Somali educationalists organized into a curriculum revision team, spending two years in a wide-reaching consultative process that led to broad support for the new textbooks, which included, notably, images of girls and boys. UNICEF organized the effort with UNESCO and international donor support. Textbooks were provided to schools throughout the country.³¹ In 2010, for example, textbooks and school supplies reached 80 per cent of schools in the NEZ, 70 per cent of schools in the NWZ and 47 per cent of schools in the CSZ.³² Agency reports indicate the materials were widely accepted and utilized, even in some Koranic schools.

Training teachers: A third major component was teacher training. Working with local authorities, UNICEF organized in-service training for thousands of primary school teachers. International subject-matter experts were hired to train teacher trainers from zonal authorities around the country. A trainer's manual was developed for each subject and a 19-day course was designed to train all lower primary school teachers in the country, using a trainer of trainer's model. Teachers were trained in Somali language, mathematics, science and social studies, as well as later in Arabic language and Islamic studies. Training included child-centred, gender-sensitive instruction, as well as other instructional management techniques and data collection for Educational Management Information System (EMIS). Gender training was a central component. The training was designed as part of a three-year package of courses that would upgrade teachers’ skills, providing them with the skills and certification equivalent to completion of a teacher training college programme.³³ Despite these efforts, the question must be raised about whether 19 days of training is sufficient, especially given the weak educational background of many trainees.

Supervision: Teachers and community education committees (CECs) need leadership, mentoring and support. Realizing this early on, UNICEF, UNESCO and a number of NGOs supervised schools as they were able. In the late 1990s, government authorities in Somaliland and some parts of Puntland began to place supervisors to oversee schools.

 More systematically, UNICEF and Education Sector Cluster (ESC)/Somali Aid Coordination Body (SACB) partners began to train supervisors. Initially the target was to prepare 1,500 supervisors for schools throughout Somalia. Supervisors were trained in community mobilization, collection of EMIS data, distribution of educational supplies, management of educational resources, improvement of school environments and training of CEC members.³⁴

School facilities: Most schools had been severely damaged, destroyed or looted. Facilities were rehabilitated using whatever funds were available. Building standards varied widely. Schools often lacked latrines, making them unsanitary for all especially for girls. UNICEF developed guidelines for safe, low-cost school buildings made of locally available materials. Construction supervisors were trained in rehabilitating school facilities. Additionally, materials were developed to encourage parents, teachers and school directors to make schools safe, clean and child friendly.³⁵

Community education committees: A key component of UNICEF's thinking about schooling in Somalia was community support. This was especially important in the absence of government in parts of Somalia and the ultimate unsustainability of international support. Accordingly, communities were encouraged to establish CECs, consisting of local volunteers. Depending on community, CEC members include parents, religious leaders, members of women's and youth groups or businessmen and women. CECs are trained by school supervisors in leadership, school management and administration. Most schools in the country now have CECs.

 Schools’ running costs are the responsibility of local communities. Communities own and/or manage almost half the schools in the country. Remaining schools are owned by individuals, local authorities and sometimes private individuals. NGOs also manage many schools. Community ownership has been particularly important in the CSZ, where local government structures are weakest.³⁶ Community management of schools and responsibility for finance helps ensure that schools can sustain themselves when government is unable.

Educational Management Information System: Lack of data was one of the greatest challenges to working in Somalia's school system. There was no information on how many teachers or children there were; how many schools were in operation; what facilities were available and needed and so on. UNICEF worked with local education officials and NGOs to initiate an annual national survey of data on primary schools in all three zones. The surveys used standard instruments to collect data on pupils, classes and schools. All primary school teachers, head teachers and supervisors were trained in use of the forms, and successful surveys have been carried out for several years.

 UNICEF also worked with regional officials to provide computers and training in the compilation of data and its use in planning and policymaking.³⁷ UNICEF and UNESCO have used the data to plan textbook distribution and teacher training.

These efforts have largely worked. UNICEF is the largest educational provider in the country, and enrolment has increased. Primary school enrolment has grown from 464,780 children in 2006–07 to an estimated 763,320 children in 2009–10. Thirty-seven per cent of new enrolments were girls. Sixty per cent of primary school students were reached with UNICEF-organized teaching and learning supplies.³⁸

How Has the Programme Worked?

The UNICEF education programme worked as a result of several factors, which we examine below. This assessment was developed through consideration of the UNICEF programme in light of best practices for education in conflict situations; based on assessments by UNICEF staff and other observers; and selected interviews with individuals who had worked in Somalia during the period of study.

Role of Local Context

Almost all of UNICEF's interventions were adapted to the local context. Without a central government, work in the local context with local actors was the only option. Still, in several particular ways, UNICEF took advantage of the local context to deliver education. In particular:

Religious and cultural sensibilities and institutions were respected: Curriculum developers worked to develop curricula that could be used in Koranic schools. Moreover, programmes were developed to build the instructional capacity of Koranic schools to teach a broader range of subjects of a basic education curriculum. Religious leaders were consulted and engaged in educational efforts in local communities. It is not known how satisfied religious leaders were with the consultation or whether compromises were made in universal values of gender equity for example. Still, the effort was made to respect the values of the country.

UNICEF has a longstanding presence and enjoys legitimacy due to its focus on local needs: UNICEF's extended presence in Somalia gave the agency a consistency, breadth and depth of engagement. UNICEF's focus on services to children and mothers has given it an unusual legitimacy. Programming for children and mothers is rarely as controversial as, for example, programmes for adolescents. Beyond education, UNICEF works in health, nutrition and other related areas, thus adding credibility. These efforts reinforced each other, with UNICEF attending, credibly, to the needs of the child as a whole.

Aid Modalities

Assistance to the central government was impossible, so UNICEF worked with a host of organizations – community-based organizations, international NGOs and international agencies, often serving as lead agency and coordinating body. Such moves run the risk of course of undermining possibilities for central leadership, of establishing parallel systems of provision or of enhancing the power of local elites, who may not have the interests of the larger public in mind. Still the value of basic educational provision was given greatest weight. For instance:

Parallel with support to schools and communities, UNICEF provided nascent sub-zonal and zonal education systems with levels of support in line with their developing capacity and ability to absorb new ideas and demands: While supporting the community level, UNICEF maintained close contact with regional education officials, assisting them as they assumed increased responsibilities for provision of education in their areas. Arguably, the capacity of zonal education offices supported by UNICEF enabled Somalia to receive the first federal grant to be allocated by the GPE. Indeed, the Mogadishu-based Somali government has established a central education ministry for the first time in 20 years, though zonal education ministries are still most active.

A reasonable effort was devoted to monitoring and evaluation, and subsequent correction: Given challenges of access, shifting security situation on the ground and very basic conditions, UNICEF allocated resources to tracking implementation of activities and evaluating the effectiveness of programmes. Evidence of effectiveness can be seen in the ongoing revision of its programme activities, at both the level of particular support, that is, services in such and such a community, and at the macro level of learning how to implement an education programme in a context like Somalia.

The breadth of activities was consciously varied; components in particular areas were added following the acceptance of earlier components: Adopting a modular approach, UNICEF standardized components of its programme, while varying their roll-out, maximizing scarce resources and variations and limitations in absorptive capacity.

Local Ownership of the Programme/Project

UNICEF developed close partnerships with local NGOs and other local and regional organizations, which were able to reach diverse communities. UNICEF partnered directly with communities, local and international NGOs and sometimes Koranic schools and religious leaders. The agency developed contracts with private businesses, and worked with various local authorities and emergent zonal government structures. Through these partnerships, UNICEF engaged many available partners and provided services to children, families and communities otherwise beyond reach. These organizations provided a kind of civil society infrastructure to support schooling and other services in the absence of formal national government. As nascent regional and sub-regional government structures emerged, UNICEF partnered with them to lay the foundation for a larger coordinated government effort. These multiple options allowed UNICEF and its international partners to exploit opportunities offered by the variety of ‘state-building' organizations Somalia produced in the absence of central government, building on Somalia's vibrant civil and private sectors and variable capacity in the different zones. In particular:

Communities were given responsibility (and provided training) to assume a primary ownership, management role in schools: After the collapse of the government education system in 1991, various community entities, such as NGOs, parents, teachers, businesses and others, assumed responsibility for starting and running schools. Whatever schooling was offered was a result of community initiative. Even now, the vast majority of Somali schools are owned by private individuals or groups. While such a radical (unintended) decentralization does ensure community ownership of schooling, the challenge is to ensure equity, quality and access across varying circumstances. At the same time, it allows for considerable resilience in the system when government is absent or unable to provide support or when security conditions permit only local activity.

Coordination was critical: Coordination was important and time-consuming as programmes and funding were coordinated with international agencies and NGOs working in education and other sectors; with more than 100 partner agencies that UNICEF worked with within Somalia; with zonal and sub-zonal governments; and with bi- and multilateral funding agencies.

In recent years, external funding has increased to help support education in Somalia. Of recent note is five-year funding from the European Union and a grant from the GPE. The EU funding is particularly welcome because it provides longer-term support than past two- and three-year funding cycles, necessitated by the lack of stability on the ground.

Programme/Project Design

UNICEF assumed many responsibilities of a functioning education ministry, ensuring provision of a full complement of complementary inputs, sufficient to enable effective, if basic, classroom instruction. For instance:

In the emergency phase, the best technology available at the time – school kits – were deployed to support instruction: Due to the destruction of school infrastructure and supplies, school kits provided a basic set of supplies for teachers to begin teaching almost anywhere.

A foundational curriculum was developed, its content carefully negotiated with stakeholders for use in both secular and Islamic schools: Of note is the legitimacy UNICEF leveraged to promote child-centred education, gender equity and inclusion, in, according to available sources, a culturally appropriate manner.

A capacity development strategy, that is, training, was developed to prepare teachers, head teachers, supervisors, and CEC members: Local actors involved in primary education – those in school, providing supervisory support to the school and in the community – were trained in the curriculum and their responsibilities vis-à-vis education.

A basic data collection system was established early on: Prior to UNICEF-supported data collection, no information existed on the numbers and locations of schools, numbers of teachers and students, overall or by grade, gender and so on. Data collection, and development of EMIS in regional education offices in Somaliland and Puntland have allowed for better planning and targeting of services and helped establish credibility for a system of schools. Teacher training covers EMIS. The Somalia Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) was introduced to collect data on a range of indicators of child welfare, in 1995 in Somaliland, in 1999 and 2006 for the whole country, and in 2011 for Somaliland and Puntland.

UNICEF programming supported linkages between emergency provision and long-term development: Programming provided support to the system at four stages on the continuum of crisis to sustainable development: (1) emergency responsiveness; (2) access to and delivery of quality services; (3) development of institutions and system capacity at local, regional and recently, national levels; and (4) participation and empowerment of users. These efforts, along with the systemic elements of curriculum, training, information and so on, provide conditions conducive to development of appropriate policy, legal frameworks and administrative offices.³⁹

Timing: In contrast to stable contexts of most development programmes, conditions shifted rapidly during the protracted conflict in Somalia. Reverses were common and cumulative progress slow. As a result, UNICEF had to programme with unusual flexibility.

UNICEF varied the level and nature of its activities according to capacities of partners and stability of areas at each particular time. The agency had sufficient information on varying conditions on the ground and sufficient flexibility in its programming to modulate support according to opportunity, need, and capacity. This flexibility meant that windows of opportunity could be exploited and partners mentored as conditions as capacity developed and conditions changed.

Conclusion

Bi- and multilateral development assistance is premised on a system of functioning national states. International development does not work well when states fail, as in Somalia, or when their effectiveness is undermined by fragility. Yet the development and humanitarian needs of people living in such contexts are generally greater than of people living in developing states.

Twenty-eight million children, 40 per cent of the world's total number of children not in school, live in countries affected by current or past armed conflict. To the extent that lack of educational opportunity fuels conflict, that is a great loss of opportunity for positive peace-building. Most recent conflicts are within rather than between states. Increasing numbers of non-state actors have emerged at the same time that state failure has heightened the importance of state fragility.⁴⁰ Hagmann and Hoehne discuss the multiple forms that state-building, properly conceived, has taken in Somalia.⁴¹ The misconception of a central state authority as the only functional form of governance has led to the assumption that the alternative to functional central government is chaos. In this case, UNICEF recognized, by necessity no doubt, that other governing entities would have to be involved for educational services to be delivered in the complex and shifting conditions of Somalia.

Ongoing engagement with actors in different types of governing entities, especially involving groups such as communities with an interest in sustaining services, helps build the foundation for longer-term development activities involving at some point even the state. The lesson from UNICEF's work in Somalia is that some of the peace-building and state-building functions of education can begin under the most fragile of conditions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND FUNDING

The authors gratefully acknowledge generous support for this research from the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki, Finland.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

James Williams is an associate professor of International Education & International Affairs at The George Washington University, where he is the UNESCO Chair in International Education for Development and the Director of the International Education Programme. His research focuses on educational planning and policy in developing countries, the (re)construction of education in contexts affected by conflict and the effects of education on conflict.

William Cummings is Professor Emeritus of International Education & International Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr Cummings’ work focused on a wide range of policy issues in international education including basic education and higher education. Recently he directed a multi-country study of the higher education professorate. He has worked in more than 40 countries, and spent considerable time in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan, among others. He has authored more than a dozen books and hundreds of journal articles and monographs.

Notes

1. UNICEF, ‘The Role of Education in Peacebuilding: Literature Review’, 2011 (at: www.unicef.org/education/files/EEPCT_Peacebuilding_LiteratureReview.pdfwww.unicef.org/education/files/EEPCT_Peacebuilding_LiteratureReview.pdf).

2. Ibid.

3. UNESCO, ‘Learning: The Treasure within', 1996 (at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdfhttp://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdf).

4. GEFI, Global Education First Initiative, United Nations, 2015 (at: www.globaleducationfirst.org/220.htm).

5. K. Bush and D. Saltarelli, The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict: Towards a Peacebuilding Education for Children, Florence: Innocenti Research Centre, 2000.

6. Ibid, p.vi.

7. UNESCO, ‘The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education: Education for All’, Global Monitoring Report, Paris: UNESCO, 2011.

8. Bush and Saltarelli (see n.5 above), p.vi.

9. See, e.g., Martin Carnoy, Education and the State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

10. For a discussion of the multiple ways ‘state-building' manifested itself in Somalia, see T. Hagmann and M.V. Hoehne, ‘Failures of the State Failure Debate: Evidence from the Somali Territories’, Journal of International Development, Vol.21, No.1, 2009, pp.42–57.

11. GEFI (see n.4 above).

12. K. Menkhaus, ‘State Failure, State-Building, and Prospects for a “Functional Failed State” in Somalia', ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol.656, No.1, 2014, pp.154–72.

13. C.T. Call, ‘Beyond the “Failed State”: Toward Conceptual Alternatives', European Journal of International Relations, Vol.17, No.2, 2011, pp.303–26; J.G. Gros, ‘Towards a Taxonomy of Failed States in the New World Order: Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.17, No.3, pp.455–71; Hagmann and Hoehne (see n.10 above).

14. S.A. Bekalo, M. Brophy and A.G. Welford, ‘The Development of Education in Post-Conflict “Somaliland”’, International Journal of Educational Development, Vol.23, No.4, 2003, pp.459–75; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0738-0593(03)00016-6P. Moyi, ‘Girl's Schooling in War-Torn Somalia', International Journal of Educational Research, Vol.53, 2012, pp.201–12; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2012.03.010P. Moyi, ‘Who Goes to School? School Enrollment Patterns in Somalia’, International Journal of Educational Development, Vol.32, No.1, 2012, pp.163–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2010.09.002

15. UNICEF, State of the World's Children 1998: Focus on Nutrition, New York: UNICEF, 1998.

16. See Government of Somalia, Interim Education Sector Strategic Plan, 2013–2015, Mogadishu: Ministry of Human Development and Public Service; Puntland State of Somalia, Puntland Education Sector Strategic Plan, 2012–2016, Garoowe: Ministry of Education; Somaliland Government, Somaliland Education Sector Development Plan, 2012–2016, Hargeisa: Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2012.

17. UNICEF, Against All Odds, New York: UNICEF (at: www.unicef,org/somalia/SOM_NewDawndoc.pdf), accessed 15 May 2015.

18. Ministry of National Planning, Somalia: Education and Human Resources Sector Assessment, Mogadishu: Government of Somali Democratic Republic with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 1984 (at: http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaap769.pdfhttp://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaap769.pdf).

19. UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Moyi, ‘Girl's Schooling in War-Torn Somalia' (see n.14 above); Moyi, ‘Who Goes to School?' (see n.14 above).

23. World Bank, World Bank Indicators, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013 (at: www.tradingeconomics.com/somalia/school-enrollment-secondary-percent-gross-wb-data.htmlwww.tradingeconomics.com/somalia/school-enrollment-secondary-percent-gross-wb-data.html).

24. W.K. Cummings, Somalia Education Sector Assessment: With Special Attention to Northwest Zone, Washington, DC: BEPS/USAID, 2003 (at: www.beps.net/publications/SomaliaEducationSectorAssessmentFinalReport.doc.pdfwww.beps.net/publications/SomaliaEducationSectorAssessmentFinalReport.doc.pdf).

25. UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

26. UNICEF, ‘Somalia: Country Programme Evaluation Report’, Nairobi: UNICEF, 2002 (at: unicef.org/evaldatabase/files/SOM_02-013_cpe.pdf).

27. UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report for Somalia’, New York: UNICEF, 2010 (at: www.unicef.org/somalia/Somalia_2010_annual_report_final.pdfwww.unicef.org/somalia/Somalia_2010_annual_report_final.pdf); Cummings, Somalia Education Sector Assessment (see n.24 above); UNICEF, ‘Somalia' (see n.26 above); UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

28. UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report' (see n.27 above); Cummings, Somalia Education Sector Assessment (see n.24 above); UNICEF, ‘Somalia' (see n.26 above).

29. UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

30. UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report’ (see n.27 above); UNICEF, ‘Somalia' (see n.26 above); UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

31. Ibid.

32. UNICEF, ‘Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT): Consolidated Progress Report to the Government of the Netherlands and the European Commission’, New York: UNICEF, 2011 (at: www.educationandtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2010_EEPCT_Consolidated_Report_30June2011.pdf)

33. UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report’ (see n.27 above); UNICEF, ‘Somalia’ (see n.26 above); UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

34. Ibid.

35. Cummings, Somalia Education Sector Assessment (see n.24 above); UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report’ (see n.27 above); UNICEF, ‘Somalia’ (see n.26 above); UNICEF, Against All Odds (see n.17 above).

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. UNICEF, ‘UNICEF Annual Report’ (see n.27 above).

39. UNICEF, ‘Somalia’ (see n.26 above).

40. UNESCO, ‘The Hidden Crisis' (see n.7 above).

41. Hagmann and Hoehne, ‘Failures of the State Failure Debate' (see n.10 above).