Student Research: Peacebuilding Processes and Problematic Service Provision in Northwest Pakistan

by Sarah Flatto

Children of Khyber-Pakthunkwa, Pakistan / Courtesy of Joshua Kruger

The following research brief is based on Sarah Flatto’s Masters integrative project research, which was funded by the Advanced Consortium in Cooperation, Complexity, and Conflict at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. She conducted qualitative interviews in Pakistan and India to examine the efficacy of international educational interventions in complex emergencies, particularly the relationship between public service provision and conflict transformation and peacebuilding. For more information or for the full text and references, please contact

The northwest region of Pakistan is currently characterized by extreme socioeconomic stratification, internal displacement, and political instability. The Khyber-Pakthunkwa (K-P) province embodies these seemingly intractable issues. In 2009, the Pakistani military launched an offensive attack aimed at clearing the K-P province of Taliban insurgents. The Taliban’s defeat and the ensuing military withdrawal left a severe vacuum of governance, in which residents have little access to basic public services, including education. The K-P province lacks reliable infrastructure and social services, and numerous schools have been destroyed by periodic violence and the devastating floods of 2010. 1.7 million internally displaced persons have returned to this region, increasing the amount of people dependent on foreign assistance for food, health, education, and community reconstruction. This number continues to grow due to more people fleeing ongoing American and Pakistani counter-insurgency campaigns. This situation can be characterized as a complex emergency, which is defined as “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region, or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country programme.” Complex emergencies pose uniquely difficult circumstances and risks for an international entity attempting to positively intervene. This research aims to clarify the means and substance of durable peacebuilding through both conflict transformation and efficient service delivery, which are necessary for complex emergency response.

International Intervention in Protracted Conflict and Complex Emergencies

International involvement and crisis intervention can play a pivotally constructive or destructive role in protracted violent conflict. Addressing underlying economic and social factors through public service provision can be a vital element in ending violent conflict. This poses a conundrum to many service providers, many of whom are reliant on the current political authority to obtain permission to deliver services. They can easily become an instrument of an authority that is seen as illegitimate by much of the beneficiary population. As a result, humanitarian workers and service providers may be targeted by rebel or insurgent forces. Underlying global involvement in peacebuilding and international crisis intervention is the fact that humanitarian donor nations have also been involved as aggressors in concurrent conflicts. This contradiction can lead to local confusion about Western involvement and its supposed separation from strategic motives. The commonly cited goal of “winning hearts and minds” through humanitarian assistance is used to gain civilian support for war. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, even referred to international NGOs as “force multipliers” in the context of the war on terror. In complex civil wars, either state or international authorities may use service delivery as a way to persuade certain populations to support them, or may deny services to certain populations as a means of controlling the path of conflict. Donors may more readily support tangibly recognized peacebuilding programs that have political goals, such as the emergence of democratic or electoral structures, in countries emerging from conflict. Yet the presence of elections or a new democratic structure can leave social and political inequalities unresolved. In a more insidious fashion, aid or development agencies that are beneficiaries of these donors can be easily implicated in preserving conflict even when professing to support peace.

Case Study: Pakistan Education Cluster

The Pakistan Education Cluster fits into the Global Education Cluster framework created by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). The Global Cluster approach is aimed to “strengthen system-wide preparedness and coordination of technical capacity to respond to humanitarian emergencies by ensuring that there is predictable leadership and accountability in all the main sectors or areas of humanitarian response.” The cluster has three foci in this region: children who are living in schools as internally displaced persons (IDPs), children who can’t go to those schools because they are occupied by IDPs, and children who are returning to their areas of origin. At the moment, the cluster is struggling to deal with managing the periodic violence of the Taliban-sponsored insurgency and recovering from last year’s devastating floods. Their main objective is attempting to solidify the Pakistani government’s support for their work, as the government is meant to govern the cluster’s activities. The Pakistan Education Cluster utilizes a “joint education needs assessment framework” to rapidly assess needs in an emergency setting and then designs a “targeted content plan.” Within education needs assessments that are conducted immediately during and following a crisis, thematic cross-cutting issues are defined in an information needs matrix. These issues include: gender, psychosocial, early childhood development, youth, inclusive education, rights, HIV and AIDS, conflict mitigation and resolution, and disaster risk reduction. The substantive strengths in the Pakistan Education Cluster stem from its contextualization of cross-cutting issues in education through harm/risk reduction approaches. This is exemplified in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which purposefully focuses activities on framing the school as an arena for other operations for communities, such as school feeding and trainings to address the impact of multiple traumas on students.

However, there are several salient weaknesses in the accountability and planning structure of the Pakistan Education Cluster that may seriously impede the equitable provision of education in emergency services. The Memorandum of Understanding describes that each cluster staff member is appointed by Co-Lead agencies which will ensure appropriate management cluster, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and other “stakeholders.” These co-leads are employed by their respective agencies and their activities in the cluster are funded by their agencies. Though the working practices describe that the cluster coordinators should strive to be “neutral, impartial, and fair representatives of the cluster,” it is unclear how this is possible in practice. From an external perspective, it seems as if the payment, reporting, and employment structure of the cluster makes the coordinators’ cluster roles indiscernible from a leadership role in their own agency. Ideally, the government, which exerts official authority over the education structures, should be planning educational activities in close collaboration with international agencies. This collaboration is dysfunctional in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province due to the fractured, corrupt nature of local governmental authorities and struggles with insurgency. Though thousands of people are dependent on the food, education, and support systems that are supplied by international humanitarian actors, the local political leadership continues to play hardball in terms of negotiations. In the recent months, contracts for 68 schools were steered to a handful of construction companies with direct ties to politicians. Despite huge sums of money designated by the Pakistani government towards the Swat Valley, in February 2010 the humanitarian community headed by OCHA recently issued a request for an additional $537 million dollars from international donors. It is evident that funding is needed, yet there is a lack of incentives for foreign donors to continue giving in the face of apparent misuse of funds.

Recommendations for Future Work: The False Relief/Development Dichotomy

The flaws and gaps in the Pakistan Education Cluster’s work primarily arise from discrepancies between international authorities’ will for coordinated humanitarian relief and the inability to operationalize this coordination through community authorities other than unreliable government actors, as well as a short-sightedness in project management impacting peaceful outcomes. The situation in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and in Pakistan at large is characterized by a rampant lack of accountability. The fact of corruption is often overlooked or excluded from much of the education in emergencies preparation work and cluster coordination. Future success in applying the education cluster approach is heavily constrained by the unique political dynamics of the region and the ongoing effects of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Relief projects must become part of a long-term, culturally competent recovery plan. This can grow to become owned by the people’s own planning, agency, and capabilities. The most feasible education policy options to expand the scope of community participation can occur through the establishment of coordinated formal and non-formal educational protocol in emergency relief. In a recent meeting with the Education Cluster, the local education community’s largest concern expressed was the lack of information sharing regarding the needs assessments being carried out. This encapsulates the main policy conundrum of the education cluster: a dearth of trust, cooperation, and clear authority structures preventing effective communication and coordination of services throughout the region.

The operational and political constraints of K-P province’s complex emergency lack innovative, holistic approaches to peacebuilding. This includes challenging the state-centric and donor-centric models that are prevalent in humanitarian project planning. These models often exclude unpredictable, localized violence which continues to fuel the trajectory of a protracted conflict. International peacebuilding “culture” might hinder the development of sustainable peace by precluding indigenous social routines, practices, discourses, and institutions. To support durable peacebuilding through comprehensive conflict transformation, evidence-based and contextualized strategies for effective, sustainable interventions are essential. This includes the full inclusion of non-international and non-governmental partners in the planning processes of coordination mechanisms. Such planning processes should utilize innovative strategies such as: inter-organizational development of assessment protocols that define and optimize local ownership structures; youth initiated/centered participation in programming; the inclusion of local alternative dispute resolution mechanisms; institutional partnerships, cross-cultural communications channels that work to prevent future emergencies; continued incorporation of qualitative feedback and evaluation. Educational emergency response must be more than a humanitarian response to needs, but should provide an infrastructure for ongoing social support and community networks that transcend barriers of conflict through both formal and informal learning processes. These self-organized networks become legitimized through local institutions defining approaches to long-term protection and stability.

The vacuous portrayal of education and humanitarian action as panaceas for conflict and protracted violence must be clarified. It is of the utmost importance that multi-stakeholder preparedness measures and responsibilities are implemented, including preparedness and contingency planning that embodies public awareness, knowledge development, and open communication. In this way, a heightened understanding of needs can be introduced that moves beyond the limited scope of operational regulations and strengthens community agency. Though this path of local ownership is complex and involves mediating between external and domestic visions of governance, it is essential for reasons of sustainability. Looking forward, the sectoral leaders in the K-P province should focus less on policies and procedures that govern administrative structures between international organizations and agencies, and more on adapting its coordination to be fully inclusive of the local community. Future application of the cluster approach or other international educational interventions should focus on grassroots voices such as parents, teachers, religious leaders, elders, and children. What is often forgotten in emergency relief is that the most accurate source of information on what is best for a recipient population is the population itself. Without this attention to preserving foundational grassroots agency, the crucial transition from emergency response to conflict transformation and peacebuilding will remain stagnant.

Published in RightsNews Volume 30, no. 2, February, 2012.
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