Regional and case trends in education quality and youth development
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through participation in the CIS.10 While some political transitions occurred peacefully, a number of civil wars tore these new nations apart (Cold War Museum, undated). At least 340,000 people were killed, and a staggering 6.76 million people (estimated) were displaced over the course of the last 20 years.11 More than 827,000 children in the CEECIS are still classified as ‘populations of concern’ – i.e., refugees, asylum-seekers, returned refugees, IDPs, returned IDPs and stateless children. There are many more children and youth living in disputed territories and areas of unresolved conflicts (UNICEF CEECIS, 2011). These seismic political, economic and social shifts have had major impacts on young people’s lives and education, including in Kosovo, Georgia and Tajikistan. The subsections below provide a brief background on political instability and conflict in Kosovo and Tajikistan.
Kosovo In the early 1990s, and as other regions of former Yugoslavia descended into war, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (who were the majority of the province’s population of roughly 2 million) organized themselves to counter increasing repression from central Yugoslav authorities based in Belgrade. Non-violent protest and sporadic violence were met with extreme violence perpetrated against ethnic Albanian insurgents and civilians by Yugoslav forces as tensions boiled into full-blown war in 1999, also involving NATO forces. Thousands of civilians were killed, and about 800,000 ethnic Albanian youth and their families were expelled from Kosovo en masse. Another 500,000 ethnic Albanians, Serbs, Roma and others also became internally displaced. According to UNHCR, there were about 18,300 IDPs remaining in Kosovo by the end of 2010 (IDMC, 2011). Kosovo’s armed conflict took a very personal and distinct toll on young people. Adolescents and youth were targeted with physical violence, including beatings, abduction, murder, sexual assault and gang rape. Many were arrested and detained, and their property and identity documents were destroyed. They lost and were separated from family and lacked food and health care, including reproductive health care for adolescent girls. Kosovo youth also struggled to get an education, as education services were disrupted and/or stopped, and schools and education infrastructure were destroyed (Lowicki and Pillsbury, 2001). UN Security Council Resolution 1244 marked the war’s formal end in 1999 and designated Kosovo an internationally administered territory. The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) carried out responsibilities for governance and development of provisional institutions for self-government, and NATO and Russian troops have acted as peacekeeping forces. Serb populations became newly displaced into enclaves and north and western Kosovo following the formal end of the conflict. What remained of Yugoslavia and had become Serbia and Montenegro, was further transformed with the formation of the separate independent republics of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006. In 2008, the Kosovo government, elected by Kosovo’s Albanian majority, also declared national independence, a status that has been formally recognized by many countries and disputed and unrecognized by many others, including Serbia. Although the Kosovo education system serves the vast majority of learners in Kosovo, the Republic of Serbia education system functions in Serbmajority areas of Kosovo, continuing an era of parallel education, but this time in reverse.
GEORGIA Georgia declared independence from the USSR in 1991, having played important agricultural, energy, economic and geopolitical roles. It experienced a number of subsequent conflicts in the 1990s, including
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CIS members include many former Soviet Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. With an administrative centre in Minsk, Belarus, the Commonwealth’s functions are to coordinate member policies regarding their economies, foreign relations, defence, immigration policies, environmental protection and law enforcement.
Calculated from multiple sources including: AlertNet, 2009; BBC, 2003; HRW, 1993 and undated; ICG, 2001; IDMC, 2009, 2009a, 2009b and 2009c; Norwegian News Agency, 2004; NRC, 2004; Petersen, 2008; Shaffer, 2003; Tabeau, 2005, UNCHR, 2006; and UNHCR, 2010.
Demand for Education Innovation: Adolescent and youth perspectives on education quality in the CEECIS Region
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