Peace Education Studies and Post-Conflict Sri Lanka

Abstract

Peace education is educational instruction focusing on a pupil’s sense of community, civic duty and cooperation. Peace education scholars hypothesize that it offers a way to foster peace and reconciliation in countries and regions coping with the aftermath of conflict. Peace education is a dynamic field of research that has gained increased attention in academia over the last four decades. One of the main propositions that scholars have investigated in this field is the possible relationship between education and the success of post-conflict development and reconciliation measures. The conflict in Sri Lanka was a decades-long armed conflict that was often described both as an ethnic conflict and as a civil war. While the warring parties were indeed of different ethnic groups, a closer examination of the conflict reveals that the tension between the ethnic groups stemmed from competition over economic and political resources and power as a legacy of ‘divide and rule’ policies set in place by a colonial ruler. After Sri Lanka gained independence from the British Empire, there was a struggle to revise the political structure that led to violent conflict. This conflict officially ended in 2009 at which time there was a renewed focus on reconstruction and reconciliation efforts that could include peace education. In this thesis, I analyze peace education studies with specific consideration given to three primary aspects of the implementation of a peace education program in post-conflict Sri Lanka, which include examining the appropriate agent and timing of implementation as well as the viability of such a program given the ongoing tension relating to ethnic and linguistic differences.