The Role of Peace-Education as a Coexistence, Reconciliation and Peace-Building Device in Ethiopia

Abstract

Since the end of the 1990s, the number of major inter-state conflicts is decreasing while intra-state conflicts are increasing. This has tripled, and fighting in a growing number of lower intensity conflicts has escalated. These increasing intra-state conflicts are mainly caused by ethnic divisions. Much of this conflict remains entrenched in low-income countries, including Ethiopia, yet some of today’s deadliest conflicts are occurring in countries at higher income levels with stronger institutions. Thus peace education is optional to deal with increasing conflicts in ethnically divided societies like that of Ethiopia. Peace-education necessarily involves formal and non-formal education and training programs aimed at changing negative attitudes and perceptions of the other side, as well as fostering peaceful coexistence, reconciliation, and peace-building between former belligerent parties. Among the goals of peace, education is the gradual legitimization of the other side's collective narrative, critical assessment of one's group role in the conflict, developing empathy and trust toward another group in an effort to narrow the psychological distance between different groups, and in this way creating grounds for inter-group dialogue and understanding. The study was conducted using a constructivist theoretical paradigm. As a qualitative study, this inquiry followed an exploratory nature. It aims at describing and exploring the role of peace education as coexistence, reconciliation, and peace-building tool. The study found that peace education deal with deep-rooted beliefs and attitudes makes the implementation of such programs challenging, because of the underlying contextual and situational factors that stimulate inter-group conflict. It also concentrates among other things on fostering discussion and reconsideration at the intra-societal and inter-societal levels of underlying factors that reinforce negative perceptions and attitudes. The study concludes that peace education at the societal level is dependent on the experience of heightened levels of an individual (and hence communal) such that peace grows ever-deeper, from the surface level of negotiation to deeper forms of co-existence and mutuality between the different structures of society. The study recommends peace education programs at the society level should precede or be implemented simultaneously with the work on coexistence, peace-building, and reconciliation.

Keywords: peace education, peace building, reconciliation, coexistence

JEL Classification: 100