Prior to the 1990's, Iraq's education system statistically surpassed its neighbors in regards to literacy, access and gender equality. Yet almost three decades of harsh sanctions and war have pushed back those advances. Today, several initiatives are underway to both depoliticize and revitalize Iraq's education system. These steps are critical to teaching democratic values, human rights and tolerance to the next generation. "The new reality that emerged in Iraq after the war demands the strengthening of a unified Iraqi civic identity that can ensure that sectarian violence will not divide Iraq's society," says Mohammed Abu Nimer, former USIP Jennings Randolph Fellow. "The only system that can ensure something like this is the education system, because it deals with the future generation."
As a critical component to its peacebuilding efforts in Iraq, USIP recently convened a workshop for senior Iraqi education officials at the request of the Iraqi Parliament. The delegation brought together senior education officials, including representatives from the Ministries of Education and Higher Education from both the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Government of Iraq (GoI), as well as the Prime Minister's Education Advisory, Baghdad University, and the Baghdad Provincial Council. The workshop, which was held January 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey, fostered dialogue and produced solid results.
The workshop was designed to provide participants with a safe space to discuss common challenges and aspirations, as well as the differences between them. A pervasive theme throughout was the need for enhanced coordination and cooperation among the country's institutions of higher education and government agencies. The politicization of Iraq's education system has prevented the kind of coordination necessary to create a national education strategy. Maria Jessop, USIP Program Officer in the Education and Training Center International and project lead attested that "all participants recognized there was a need for more coordination among the different education entities in Iraq. They valued the opportunity to discuss challenges at length."
In a major breakthrough, several institutions from the KRG and from the GoI agreed on a series of steps to coordinate their education policies. "The Ministry of Higher Education on both sides [planned to] engage in a series of actions to address the issue of enrollment and enhance the ability of Iraqi students to attend any school in Iraq regardless of their ethnic or sectarian identity," said Abu Nimer. "There was a moment in the workshop when they were able to address quite honestly the issues of language and history as they relate to education," said Jessop.
Among the problems addressed were the need to rehabilitate and re-equip educational infrastructure; increase student enrollment; modernize curriculum to bring it up to international standards; and build the capacity of the academic and administrative leadership of Iraq's higher education institutions.
Participants agreed there is an urgent need to provide teacher-training courses in the areas of human rights, pluralism, non-violence and peaceful coexistence. "Workshop participants looked to USIP to support them in this," Jessop explained. In coordination with the Peace and Human Rights Education Unit at University of Baghdad, USIP is working closely with a cadre of university professors throughout Iraq on developing skills for teaching human rights. USIP is also helping to disseminate citizenship skills in secondary schools through its "Rights of the Citizen" program, an 11-lesson plan that teaches the basic rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy. "Rights of the Citizen" has successfully reached over 400 youth in eight secondary schools in five Baghdad districts. Through teacher trainings, USIP is expanding its efforts to engage an even greater number of young minds.
Following the workshop, representatives of the Ministries of Education and Higher Education in the GoI publicly announced that they would follow through with several of the commitments made at the Istanbul conference. The MoE conducted a meeting to discuss methods of improving language-teaching skills in secondary schools, while the MoHE announced that they would provide funding for professors to attend professional development training outside of Iraq. Follow-up meetings are being conducted to further coordinate efforts between the KRG and the GoI.
Overall, the workshop laid the foundations for a necessary component of peacebuilding in Iraq. "If you are going to focus on long term peace and stability you have to focus on providing access to quality education and reforming educational practices and content in a way that promotes pluralism and coexistence," said Jessop. "How will those in government and the legal sector work effectively if they have not been through an education system that has exposed them to the principles of democracy, human rights, pluralism and coexistence? Long-term peace in any society is very dependent on an education system that provides the tools for active and responsible citizenry, including knowledge of government systems, laws, and human rights, as well as skills in advocacy, conflict resolution, dialogue, and critical thinking."
