Initiative for Strengthening Education in Emergencies Coordination

With complex and protracted crises affecting more lives than ever in recent history, identifying and promoting ways to help children maintain education is an urgent priority. Strong coordination is integral for an effective, efficient and agile response to growing education needs of children and youth in humanitarian contexts. Recognizing this, the GEC, UNHCR, UNESCO and INEE have established the Initiative for Strengthening EiE Coordination (ISEEC).

Key Principles

1. While ISEEC is an important platform for information sharing and collaboration across the EiE response, it does not preclude or substitute operational conversations among the partners and other bilateral relationships held by agencies involved.
2. ISEEC partners recognize that joined up coordination is an approach to facilitate more exchange and collaboration among coordination mechanisms in country rather than a fixed model. It is critical to contextualize how countries approach joined up coordination based on their needs and operational reality.

Ways of Working

1.        The ISEEC Workplan is a key tool used to ensure partners work towards the achievement of shared priorities in line with the ISEEC theory of change and commitments in the GRF pledge.

2.        Partners commit to proactively share information of collective interest (i.e. planning processes, funding windows, deployments) to enusre alignment and identify opportunities for collaboration at the global or country level.

3.        Partners commit to inclusive and consultative processes around the production of global public goods, organization of or participation in events (i.e. talking points), other external information and reporting to donors that reference ISEEC.

4.        Day to day collaboration led by ISEEC’s Partnerships Support Team (PST) through regular meetings and touch points, with oversight by the Management Team.

Enhancing Sectoral Coordination

The report Education in Emergencies Coordination: Harnessing humanitarian and development architecture for Education 2030 outlines two key recommendations to enhance sectoral coordination to better meet education needs:

1.        Join up education cluster and refugee education coordination in mixed and complex settings and commit to finding solutions so that all crisis-affected children and youth can access safe, quality education.

2.        Connect education in emergencies to the national education sector through systematic engagement between humanitarian and development coordination mechanisms, promoting humanitarian principles, enhancing the quality of education in emergencies responses and contributing to crisis-ready education systems.

Through ISEEC, the GEC, UNHCR, INEE, and UNESCO will champion partnership and collaboration across the coordination systems, focusing on practical steps to advance five key actions:

1.        Build shared understanding and acceptance of different education in emergencies coordination systems and ways of working;

2.        Introduce structural and systemic opportunities for dialogue, exchange and collaboration;

3.        Allocate time and resources for joined-up coordination and streamlined planning processes;

4.        Join up coordination at preparedness stage and from the very start of a response;

5.        Invest in communication, exchange and capacity building between global, national and sub-national education in emergencies coordination systems.

Case Studies

The ISEEC published two case studies to highlight the achievements and lessons learned from collaborative EiE work in Ethiopia and Sudan. Across both contexts, key enablers included ISEEC training and workshops, participation in coordination meetings, strengthening partnership, and development of roadmaps to enhance collaboration among key education stakeholders. This resulted in improved resource mobilization, durable and inclusive solutions, sub-national coordination ,and harmonized standards.

Background

The foundation for ISEEC was laid in 2017-19 through the Education Cannot Wait funded Global Partners Project which aimed to strengthen joined up education coordination during emergencies by developing global public goods. Working with the Overseas Development Institute, this project built a comprehensive evidence base for improved education in emergencies coordination by mapping what does and does not work in joint education planning and response across a wide-range of emergencies and protracted crises. This evidence base was then used to inform the development of ISEEC.

 

Additionally, the project provided structured opportunities for dialogue, exchange and collaboration between the three partners, resulting in a joint pledge made by the GEC, UNHCR and INEE at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum, committing to continue working together to strengthen coordination for education for refugees and all crisis-affected children and youth. While the project concluded in 2020, the GEC, UNHCR and INEE will continue to work together to advance our joint pledge through ISEEC. UNESCO joined the ISEEC partnership in 2022