ABSTRACT
An Analysis of the Peace Education in Sri Lanka: Focusing on the Evolution of Ownership
LEE Ji-Hyang
Department of Education
Global Education Development Cooperation major
The Graduate School Seoul National University

This study examines the development of peace education in Sri Lanka, focusing on the evolution of the ownership. In order for education to contribute to peacebuilding, it requires serious commitment, resources, and institutional changes to have a sustained effect. This is also in line with what ownership agenda calls for to make the impact of aid more effective and sustainable. In this regard, this study explores how ownership of peace education has historically evolved, transformed, and merged in Sri Lanka by looking at education policies and peace education programs in 1990s and 2000s.
The principle of ownership has become a new paradigm in development cooperation since the 1990s. To make impact of aid more effective and sustainable, partnership between donor and partner countries has been increasingly highlighted. It challenges past experiences of the development community that mainly injected foreign programs and resources into developing countries. Also, the role of education in conflict-affected countries has received growing attention during the past two decades. The development of peace education in Sri Lanka is highly related to the changing notion of the role of education in peacebuilding and ownership in development cooperation. Efforts were made by the government and donors to make education better contribute to transforming conflict to peacebuilding with strengthened local ownership.
Sri Lanka has experienced nearly thirty years of ethnic conflict, and education has served as both problem and solution to the conflict. Unequal opportunities in the education system among different minority groups, language policy, and biased curricula and textbooks have escalated the conflict. Against this backdrop, national and international efforts have been made to integrate peace into the education system from the 1990s in an umbrella term of ‘peace education.’ The development of peace education in Sri Lanka over last twenty years can be characterized into three phases in accordance with major educational policy developments. The first phase, in the 1990s, was an educational response to social and cultural issues in the context of Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. Social need to include peace concepts in the education system have moved the government to undertake the General Education Reforms of 1997. The second phase started with the World Bank’s introduction of the SectorWide Approach in the early 2000s via the Education Sector Development Framework and Programme. The third phase was marked by the establishment of national policies and actions, supported by small donors under separate themes in the late 2000s. ‘Education for Social Cohesion and Peace’ was supported by the Germany in 2008 and ‘Peace and Sustainable Development’ was supported by UNESCO in 2012.
In two decades of development, the peace education in Sri Lanka has also been highly influenced by the changing environment in development cooperation that highlights ownership. New aid modalities were introduced to enhance the recipient country’s leadership for its development policy and process. Project based approach has been replaced by sector approaches. Conditionality has been less stressed and harmonization of donors has been emphasized. As a result, the ownership of peace education in Sri Lanka has been constantly evolved and devolved in the process.
This study concludes that ownership is not a precondition but an outcome of partnership in the donor-recipient relationship. Despite the renewed emphasis on the ownership principle and introduction of new aid modalities, individual priorities of donors override efforts for coordination. Therefore, peace education in Sri Lanka has been fragmented under various titles and often been politicized due to the lack of adequate monitoring for its contents. Capacity building to enhance the ownership of peace education has been limited to teacher education that the balanced development of policy and practice. Furthermore, peace education in Sri Lanka failed to achieve the participation of all stakeholders at all levels, which is the most essential element for effective peace education.
The past twenty years of educational policy development in Sri Lanka has highlighted peace education. Peace had been promoted by textbook and curriculum revision, teacher training, extra curriculum activities, and integration of the concept into policy. At the institutional level, there has been significant progress in the development of key policy frameworks to support peace education in Sri Lanka. Despite these positive developments, much work remains for both the government and donors to further enhance ownership of the process as well as the contents of peace education.
Key Words: peace education, ownership, development cooperation, fragile states,
international educational development, Sri Lanka