Arts education in emergency humanitarian aid: educational issues with young people living in camps in conflict areas in the Middle East

Conflicts are intensifying as much as they cause protracted crises and have an impact on the long term, particularly on the fate of the populations affected (Wieviorka et al., 2014; ICRC, 2016). Alongside life in these sclerotic war zones that we are trying to escape, global structures are impacted by migratory flows: more and more people are displaced or refugees because of conflicts, i.e. about 68.5 million people in 2018 and according to the latest UNHCR, more than 70.5 million people in the world today (UNHCR, 2019).

Armed conflict is a major obstacle to enrolment and persistence in school and access to quality education. More than 125 million children and young people affected by violence and in urgent need of educational support. The major reform of the humanitarian sector in 2005 contributed significantly to the emergence of the field of education in emergencies (EiE), which is currently developing mainly in emergency humanitarian responses. Artistic interventions with psychosocial objectives are increasingly deployed with children affected by conflict, particularly to promote well-being. In response to the many social and educational challenges and theoretical gaps, our presentation aims to contextualize the scope of arts education activities for education in emergencies, and to present some results related to the well-being of our field experiences in a participatory action research. We contribute to defining what well-being is within the framework of artistic workshops with children in an IDPs camp in Iraq.