**5. The role of education in peace-building in the great lakes region of sub-Saharan Africa**

Available education and economic evidences indicates that violence and conflicts are some of the biggest barriers and challenges to development in most of the world's poorest countries [22]. Of the 40 poorest countries in the world, 24 are either in the midst of armed conflict or have only recently emerged from it [23]. Empirical evidences and life experiences have consistently indicated that education is the most important tool for improving human development and to eradicate poverty. For generations, it has been used as a means by which to develop the values, knowledge and skills for the personal health, safety, and for future economic and social development. Perhaps, this may help to explain why the MDGs and SDGs places so much emphasis through Education for All (EFA) on achieving universal, free and compulsory basic education.

However, in the sub-Saharan region, there are many impediments to the achievement of EFA. In the Great Lakes Region, these impediments are said to include lack of priority to education on the part of national governments. In this context, lack of priority include misallocation and insufficient spending as a percentage of GNP, inequitable distribution of funding and resources across and within provinces or regions and districts within the countries, and sometimes limited or totally no commitment and/or effective action in the use of development assistance on the part of the international community. Even within individual countries in the GLR, barriers to the enrolment of children in school include the existence of armed conflicts and displacement, child-labor, poverty, distance from school, gender biases, and cultural factors.

Evidence from empirical and gray sources indicates that the number of out-ofschool primary-age children in the world has fallen in recent years, and the situation in conflict-affected countries has seen very little improvement. While conflictaffected countries are home to only 13% of the world's population, yet half of all the children out of school (37 million out of 72 million children) live there. More disturbing fact is that these countries receive less than one-fifth of education aid from the international community [24].

One of the available the most recent estimates by the EFA Global Monitoring Report [5, 25] is that 28 million children live in conflict-affected countries (42% of the world total of children out of school). A huge segment of them (46%) live in the sub-Saharan region especially in the GLR of the African continent [26]. This section provides a brief summary of three ways in which the international community and aids agencies may think about the role of education in conflict-affected situations. Broadly, the noted agencies represent areas that have gained greater attention in the last three decades in international development discourses. It is important to note that background and scope this discourse can be traced back to the Second World War (1939–1945). Although each discourse seems to represent a slightly different perspective arising from a common concern, however, all are about the way that conflict affects the lives of school children, their families and their right to access quality education.

The first discourse is concerned with protection of children and a better way to respond to the negative impacts of violent conflicts on their education and psychological wellbeing. To some extent, this approach is primarily of humanitarian motivation. The second discourse focuses on the fact that education is provided in a way that 'does no harm' to anybody including children. Some scholars have termed it as a conflict-sensitive education. That is, it is sensitive to sources of conflict in the society in which it is situated, and is provided in a way that does not worsen

the existing antagonisms or animosities. In other words, in this discourse education can 'do some good' to individuals and societies. The most cited argument is by contributing to transformations within conflict-affected societies and individuals that might make peace possible and more likely to sustain and endure. In other words, the focus is on education that contributes to peace-building efforts. It is important to note that overlapping elements of these discourses have emerged and sometimes, co-existed throughout a considerable period of time. However, at times one perspective may have gained more prominence than another. Although in most cases the discourses do interact, separate development has been more common than their integration. This has been reflected in the emergence of distinct communities of practices across academia and conflict-affected contexts.
