Crisis-sensitive educational planning in Kenya

03 October 2018

kenya_group.jpg

IIEP meets with staff from the Kenyan Ministry of Education.

IIEP-UNESCO carried out a scoping mission to Kenya from 24-28 September as part of its three-year programme with the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI). The mission will inform IIEP’s country-level activities in Kenya for the next two years, in collaboration with UNHCR, the Global Education Cluster (GEC), and the UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa in Nairobi.

As part of the mission, IIEP met with key stakeholders related to crisis-sensitive educational planning, including the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the country’s Education in Emergencies (EiE) and Urban Refugee Education working groups. The mission also included field visits to Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps, where IIEP met with sub-country education officers, representatives from the Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS), and a range of education partners.

The mission aimed to identify key topics and areas of technical expertise related to crisis-sensitive planning for IIEP’s technical cooperation work in Kenya. It also aimed to identify relevant stakeholders and capacity development needs that could be addressed through IIEP technical support.

The mission built on other activities carried out as part of IIEP’s FPI-funded programme in the country, including the ‘Regional workshop on crisis-sensitive planning and the inclusion of displaced populations in national education systems’, organised by UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF, GEC in Nairobi, Kenya, from 20 to 23 March 2018. The workshop brought together country teams from Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Somalia, and Uganda.

During the mission, IIEP met with members of the MoE’s country team that participated in the Institute’s recent distance course ‘Educational planning for crisis risk reduction and forced displacement’, held from 2 May to 3 July 2018. All participants from the Kenyan country team were awarded [TS1] with certificates of successful completion for their work on the course.

In recent months, various initiatives have been undertaken in Kenya related to crisis-sensitive planning, including the introduction of a new Education Sector Disaster Management Policy and the development of the forthcoming national Education Policy on the Inclusion of Refugees and Asylum Seekers. International commitments such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s (IGAD) Djibouti Declaration on Regional Refugee Education, and the New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) have also generated considerable momentum to address the education needs of displaced populations in Kenya and the region.

IIEP expects to begin the implementation of its country-level activities as part of the IIEP-FPI programme in Kenya before the end of the year.

The sub-county education office in Turkana West visited as part of IIEP’s field visit to Kakuma.