Curriculum Choices for Refugees: What UNRWA’s History Can Tell Us about the Potential of UN Education Programs to Address Refugees’ ‘Unknowable Futures’

Abstract

Quality education can help refugees navigate their ‘unknowable futures’. Yet, the potential of many education programs to fulfil this promise is shaped by the varied and at times, conflicting interests inherent in aid policy and practice. This article explores these tensions through a historical examination of UNRWA’s education program in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. I show how an embedded state-centric approach to policy limited the UN’s influence over the education it provided to Palestine refugees. This manifested through a narrow focus on access to education, and refugees’ ability to get jobs, at the expense of education’s social and political roles. I argue that this case has wider resonance for understanding the institutional dynamics of global refugee education policies and points to the need for a more nuanced understanding of claims by aid agencies that education necessarily helps refugees navigate their unknowable futures.