From Testimony to Justice: Linking Evidence, Law, and Practice to Address Attacks on Education in Divided Societies

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In a divided world, protecting education is inseparable from building peace. This panel re-examines the relationship between education and peace through the lens of accountability, arguing that justice for attacks on education is not only a legal obligation but also a peacebuilding necessity. By integrating community evidence, domestic legal analysis, and standardized investigative methods, the session offers a roadmap for embedding education protection into transitional justice processes.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) defines attacks on education as threats or acts of violence against students, teachers, education personnel, and educational facilities, carried out for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious, or criminal reasons. These include targeted killings, abductions, sexual violence, recruitment of children at or on the way to school, bombings and other attacks on schools, and the military use of educational facilities.

As highlighted in both Education Under Attack reporting by GCPEA and the academic literature, these assaults inflict acute harms—death, injury, displacement, trauma, and immediate learning loss—while also producing long-term consequences such as teacher attrition, reduced enrollment, weakened trust in institutions, and the erosion of education as a public good. Communities suffer intergenerational impacts as children’s schooling is interrupted and teachers leave the profession, undermining the very capacity of education systems to serve as drivers of peace and recovery. These layered harms underscore why accountability is essential: justice for attacks on education is central to peacebuilding.

Linking Education, Accountability, and Transitional Justice

Transitional justice (TJ) frameworks are intended to address past violence through mechanisms such as prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, and institutional reform. Yet, gaps in the academic literature suggest that, until recently, education has often been neglected in TJ agendas, treated as peripheral rather than as a core site of violation and redress. This neglect weakens peacebuilding: schools are not only places of learning but also spaces of social cohesion, and when they are attacked, communities lose critical arenas for rebuilding trust and civic identity.

This panel asserts that addressing attacks on education within TJ contributes to peace in at least three ways:

1) Recognition of harm: documenting and naming attacks validates survivors’ experiences, ensuring they are acknowledged in truth-telling and reparations processes;

2) Accountability and deterrence: credible evidence enables prosecutions and disciplinary measures, signaling that education cannot be treated as a legitimate target;

3) Guarantees of non-recurrence: institutional reforms and protections informed by evidence can deter future attacks and restore trust in education systems.

Panel Contributions

This panel combines three interlinked perspectives—community testimony in Colombia, domestic legal frameworks in the Philippines, and methodological rationales embedded in GCPEA’s Toolkit—each of which illuminates a different dimension of the accountability chain.

Presentation 1: Based on field interviews with teachers, this study examines the impacts of attacks on education and how teachers envision justice. Findings reveal that teachers have an array of suggestions for measures to prevent and respond to attacks on schools, students, and their fellow educators. They also demand recognition and guarantees of non-recurrence. Their testimony provides evidence not only of harm but also of community agency.

Presentation 2: This case study explores the domestic legal framework in the Philippines, including the 2019 Children and Armed Conflict Law, which criminalizes attacks on schools and declares them “zones of peace.” It highlights how multilateral norms—such as those embedded in the United Nation’s children and armed conflict agenda and the Safe Schools Declaration—are translated into national frameworks. It also interrogates the challenges of enforcement, offering lessons on how evidence and monitoring systems can be leveraged for accountability.

Presentation 3: This presentation turns to the GCPEA Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Attacks on Education, which provides the standards needed to move from testimony to justice. The Toolkit demonstrates why systematic, trauma-informed, and comparable data collection matters: because transitional justice relies on evidence, survivors deserve recognition, and peacebuilding requires enforceable remedies.

A Practice-Oriented Session

Though anchored in research, this session is designed with practitioners in mind. Each presentation links findings to practical implications: how teachers’ testimony can inform reparations, how national laws can be used by communities and advocates, and how standardized methodologies can transform anecdotal accounts into evidence usable in courts and truth commissions.

This practice-oriented angle reflects the CIES 2026 theme—“Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World.” In contexts of division, justice for attacks on education is both symbolic and structural: it names and addresses harms while rebuilding trust in schools as safe and inclusive spaces.

Contribution to the Field and to CIES 2026 Theme

The panel advances scholarship by bringing together new empirical evidence, legal analysis, and methodological frameworks. It contributes to comparative and international education by showing how research can feed into transitional justice and peacebuilding. It also directly engages the conference theme, demonstrating that in divided societies, addressing attacks on education is not just about prevention but also about justice, recognition, and repair.
Ultimately, this panel argues that accountability for attacks on education must become central to peacebuilding. Testimony, law, and methodology together provide the tools to transform recognition into justice, and justice into lasting peace.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Rob M Grace, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict

Chair

• Dana Burde, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Protecting the Classroom: Analysis of Teacher-Led Strategies to Prevent and Respond to Attacks in Rural Colombia - Jerome Marston, Kobo

• Domestic Laws Relevant to Preventing and Addressing Grave Violations Against Children During Armed Conflict in the Philippines: An Assessment - Rob M Grace, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict

• From Testimony to Justice: The GCPEA Toolkit as a Framework for Accountability - Allyson Bachta, U Mass Boston