Education in Complex Emergencies: A Case Study of the IRC Guinea Education Program

This masters thesis is a case study of the IRC Guinea Education Program. Civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone sent tens of thousands of people across the border to safety in Guinea. The newly arrived refugees started schools on an ad hoc basis to protect their children. Intervention by the International Rescue Committee, an agency that has traditionally specialized in humanitarian relief, took on the mandate to organize the refugee schools into one system and to implement programs as part of the relief effort. The lives of the refugees were changed because the IRC sponsored education programs gave an entire generation of children, and tens of thousands of adults, access to a formal education, to non-formal programs and vocational training they otherwise would not have had.