Peace Education as a Post-conflict Peacebuilding Tool

This article provides a critical analysis of the literature and reports on peace education programmes in countries emerging from violent conflicts. First, it begins with an overview of peace education's history. Next, it examines how peace education has been conceptualised, and highlights why it remains poorly defined. The article then proceeds by looking at the development of the international community's use of peace education as a tool to contribute to their peacebuilding efforts in countries emerging from protracted contexts. After that, it reviews the research and evaluation work that has been done on peace education programmes. The article concludes with a survey of peace education programmes in ethnically/religiously linked post-conflict environments that have made mainstreaming their goal, and identifies areas of future research.