The event was held alongside a United Nations event and was attended by a number of important figures and representatives of international organizations, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations Assistant for partnerships in the Middle East and Central Asia, Rashid Khalikov, and involving the participation and support of the Permanent Mission of the State of Qatar to the United Nations, which provided all the facilities and technical and logistical support for the event.

Mr/Mohammed bin Ali Al-Ghamdi, Executive Director for International Development at QC, said that the event met with considerable praise, pointing to the importance of QC’s desire to highlight the role of education in promoting social harmony in post-conflict areas such as Somalia, Sri Lanka and Bosnia.

Rashid Khalikov congratulated QC on its efforts and thanked the Permanent Mission of the State of Qatar's for its contribution.

He added “Education during emergencies is a human subject, pointing out that the provision of education decreases the risk of violence and conflict. He then highlighted that the importance of education should not stop at children and young people but it should reach parents equally for the life continuation feeling it provides.

Program of the session 

The session was initiated by Al-Ghamdi who welcomed the attendees before playing an introductory video about QC, followed by the submission of papers by experts from international organizations and institutions and academics from four universities. The first axis provided a general background on the event theme of ‘The role of education in promoting social harmony’, the second was entitled ‘what is expected from education in terms of the re-modeling of social harmony in the post-conflict areas?’, the third included case studies from Somalia, Sri Lanka and the fourth and last discussion covered education and its impact on conflicts as well as society.

The first axis

“The role of education in promoting social harmony, the main theme of this event, covers a range of issues, namely: the reality of conflicts across the world and their effects, conflict resolution and peace-sustainability efforts, conflict and issues connected to social cohesion, education and the promotion of social harmony and the challenges facing the harnessing of education in promoting social harmony,” Al Ghamdi said, concluding that the first axis posed a range of questions, answered by the following axes.

The second axis

the second axis was presented by Dr/Mohammed Sharqawi, Professor of Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, and included a definition of social harmony in terms of academic and research based social theories. Sharqawi discussed the relationships between social harmony, identity, economic interests, marital status and belonging to a group or community.

Prof.Sharqawi spoke of a Bosnian case, providing a practical example of how to adapt the tool of education in order to achieve and promote social harmony in a country like Bosnia, which suffered from ethnic and religious conflict for over five years, leading to the murder and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and tearing apart the social fabric of the communities.

The session ended with proposals for education re-modeling before social harmony by focusing on three key factors: redesign of the curriculum and reviewing the curricula of existing decisions, by focusing on primary and secondary education as a sustainable Peace factor, and finally, promoting and spreading the culture of equal citizenship.

The third axis

As for case studies, Mr.Abdul Rahman Sharif, Head of Non-Governmental organizations in Somalia, used Somalia as a model, including background on the country and explaining that in reality the country is divided into three areas; Somaliland (independent), Portland (autonomous) and southern Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu.

Sharif spoke about the conflict in Somalia and the different types of conflict. His paper considered the implications of the collapse of the education system in many areas of Somalia. He went on to consider some of the initiatives in the revival of the educational process and the use of different types of education as tools to promote social harmony and a culture of peace, ending with recommendations and proposals on strengthening and unifying the educational system in order to promote a culture of peace and social harmony.

Miss/Stephanie Licht, head of evaluation and follow-up in the German agency GIZ, gave a presentation on the Sri Lankan case, covering the German experience through the program supported by the German government and which has been in place since 2005, i.e. during and after the conflict. The program achieved outstanding results in terms of social harmony through education. The Sri Lankan situation can be characterised by its similarity to the current conflicts in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen in terms of ethnic, religious, sectarian and ethnic diversity, with differences in culture, religious beliefs and even language.

The program focused on secondary education, where numerous approaches and curricula were used at the beginning of the program through its application to a sample of schools reached 200 schools before ruling out a combination of these approaches that have proven to be of no importance or unfeasible in achieving social harmony, along with the adoption of approaches, which contributed to its promotion.

Among the most important program success factors were the contribution and participation of the government and its complete conviction of the program importance, the desire of local authorities for the success of the program, the contribution and participation of local communities in the program and their interaction with it, and finally the use and adoption of a multi-level approach (government, region (province), schools) during the design and application.

The program focused on three issues involving curriculum design: social and psychological care (to address the effects of violence and conflict on the target groups), education of the second nationality (Sinhala, Tamil) in secondary education, and peace and the values ​​of education. At the end of the paper Licht spoke of the positive results achieved, backing them up with numbers and statistics.

The fourth axis

Axes four and five were introduced by Dr. Alan Codman, President of the International Institute of Education in New York. Codman presented some important information about education and the conflict-affected and vulnerable, particularly students and teachers.

He spoke of the importance of involving local people in the planning of finding solutions to the problems of education in their respective countries, as well as the need to be supportive of the political administration of the educational process and to support the importance of the resumption of education in conflict zones.

Codman’s talk focused on three key issues in education in conflict zones: protecting teachers, the training and enabling of teachers in places of conflict and focusing on the dropout of students and their immediate return and reintegration into education.

Qatar Charity (QC) has distributed dry food supplies to 1,000 Somali Refugee Families living in the Dadaab camp in Kenya to help them cope with the acute food shortage.

The distribution of food supplies was carried out at a cost of QR 200,000 through QC’s field office in the country in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is responsible for managing these camps.

The relief was provided as part of a joint campaign launched by Qatar Charity and UNHCR last April to raise more than $9.6mn to reach out to 100,000 people.

The campaign is aimed at helping Somali returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and integrating them with receiving communities by rehabilitating the public infrastructure in the fields of health, education, shelter, water, and sanitation.

UNHCR and Qatar Charity seek to enable Somali returnees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and receiving communities to have access to education; and reintegrate them through the establishment of a public infrastructure that will assist in rehabilitation and construction in order to promote peaceful coexistence and self-reliance.

Also, both parties seek to provide access to basic services in the areas of return; so that Somali returnees, displaced persons and receiving communities can achieve appropriate conditions of stability.

Qatar Charity has chosen Dadaab camp, one of the oldest refugee camps in the world, due to the need for food support, especially during the holy month of Ramadan. The relief project has targeted 1,000 refugee families in the camp, providing a food basket to each family. The basket includes rice, sugar, flour, oil and powdered milk.

The implementation of this project came at a time when refugees living in Dadaab camps faced a shortage of Ramadan food supplies, as most of them depend on food aid provided by humanitarian organizations, especially WFP.

This assistance was the first aid to many needy and poor families in the refugee camps, as it was provided during the last ten days of Ramadan.

The Dadaab camp was established in northeastern Kenya on the border with Somalia in 1991 when the civil war broke out in Somalia. However, the number of refugees in the camp rose to about 500,000 due to drought occurred in Somalia during 2011. With the start of a voluntary repatriation campaign for Somali refugees, the number now stands at 250,000.  

Qatar Charity continues to ease Syrians’ plight

During the last few years, Qatar Charity (QC), in cooperation and coordination with the Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities (RACA) and in partnership with many organizations, have launched many Relief Campaigns to continue to Support Syrian people within their country and the countries of asylum.

These campaigns aimed at meeting the urgent needs of the Syrian people struggling to survive under challenging humanitarian situations. 

Recently, a delegation from Qatar Charity has distributed the first batch of urgent aid directly to the displaced in the country, and refugees in Turkish areas bordering Syria, in view of one of the largest Syrian displacements since 2011. The aid included 200 tons of relief materials worth over 14 million riyals to benefit 864,618 people. Another delegation is expected to deliver the second batch of aid to the Syrian vulnerable.

It is worth mentioning that the ‘Arsal Relief’ campaign, launched last year by Qatar Charity under the supervision of RACA, has benefited hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and the countries of asylum, focusing on providing urgent relief to those affected by snowstorms, frost and rain.

Last year, the needs of the Syrian people within their country and in the countries of asylum amounted to nearly 9 billion dollars, of which only 4 billion dollars were raised, meaning that only 42% of the 2019 needs were met, according to a UN report.

It is worth mentioning that during the last three months, according to United Nations, more than 900,000 people, 80% of them women and children, have been displaced, in addition to half a million children, who have also been displaced.

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