Coming to this topic from outside the development and humanitarian field, I was unfamiliar with the term and idea of "education in emergencies." What constituted an emergency? Who decided? Who was working on the ground in these designated emergencies to provide education? And how did the education in emergencies field overlap with refugee education?
A number of events and changes over the last 70 years have shaped the field of education in emergencies as we know it today. In some ways this work can be linked back to President Truman's launching of international development aid, and allocating some of that funding to support education in low and middle income countries; and yet, often times in humanitarian "crises," money goes to other services rather than education. But why would the United States care about education in emergencies? Besides the moral argument that all young people "deserve" to have the opportunity to learn, and beyond the "rights" argument that all young people actually have the legal right to learn, the United States has also historically been somewhat wary of the potential unrest that uneducated masses could potentially lead to. In other words, a link has been drawn between a lack of education, the creation of weak or fragile states, and that potentially being a threat to democracy as it exists in the United States and/or the rest of the world today (whether or not countries teetering on that fragile/not-fragile state side of things are always actually democratic when they are considered "stable" is another question I won't get into here). The point is that the field was strategically linked to humanitarian action to ensure that education would not fall through the cracks of other kinds of relief aid (Burde et al., 2016).
According to the report of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on its General Discussion on the Right of the Child to Education in Emergencies Situation in 2008, "emergency situations" affecting education are defined as all situations in which man-made or natural disasters destroy, within a short period of time, the usual conditions of life, care and education facilities for children and therefore disrupt, deny, hinder progress or delay the realisation of the right to education. Such situations can be caused by, inter alia, armed conflicts - both international, including military occupation, and non-international, post-conflict situations, and all types of natural disasters'" [bold added] (Right to Education Initiative, see this page also for a description of the importance of education in emergencies, international instruments and bodies of law related to the issue, as well as the International Network for Education in Emergencies' Minimum Standards Handbook).
So, that answers part of my question about the technical definition of an "emergency," and who decides what that definition entails (the Committee on the Rights of the Child). But who is doing the work on the ground to provide education in emergencies?
There are six major education in emergencies organizations:
UNHCR
UNICEF
UNESCO
Education Cluster
GPE
INEE
What are their mandates? What are their priorities or areas of work? How do they engage with education in emergencies? And are these more humanitarian organizations, development organizations or both? (Here I am understanding humanitarian work as usually more of a short term response focused on basic needs, vs. development as a longer term response looking towards structures and education in the future).
Note: collectively, most of organizations are working in some way towards the SDGs as a long term goal; most of them are focused on policy, and are not necessarily the ones "on the ground" doing the work (often that direct contact happens through NGOs).
As for my final question about how the education in emergencies field overlaps with refugee education, you can see here that UNHCR is one organization that engages with education in emergencies. Here, though, it is important to distinguish between "emergency education" - what UNHCR describes as "temporary measures that accidentally turn into long-term responses to children's educational needs...system[s] with no recognized examinations or certification, with inadequate materials and poor infrastructure, taught by undertrained and under-qualified teachers" - and education as a "core part of UNHCR's emergency response to a humanitarian crisis" (UNHCR, n.d.). In other words, education must be seen as part of the planning and funding related to refugee emergencies; this shift, ideally, moves away from the provision only of education in immediate "emergency" situations conceptualized within a narrow framework of danger or conflict, and recognizes that the situation refugee students is in is inherently a state of emergency because "the usual conditions of life, care and education facilities" for children and youth are disrupted - as is therefore their right to education (UNHCR, n.d.).
Burde, D., Kapit, A., Wahl, R., Guven, O., and Skarpeteig, M. (2016). "Education in Emergencies." Review of Educational Research 87 (3):619-658.
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