THE ROLE OF ICTS IN REBUILDING EDUCATION IN AREAS OF ARMED CONFLICTS: THE SYRIAN CASE

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011 more than 45% of the population has been displaced, half of which are children. For a large fraction of the Syrian population the access to education has therefore been interrupted and recent statistics show that almost 3 million Syrian children have not had access to any education during more than four years. The presented research aims are twofold. Firstly, to survey ongoing projects that make use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in rebuilding education for the Syrian population and, secondly, to offer recommendations for good practices on how governments and relevant non-governmental organizations (NGO's) can optimize their use in rebuilding the educational system during the ongoing, armed conflict. The research design is based on a multiple case-study methodology where we mainly focus on three concrete initiatives. The first is located inside Syria, the second is based in a refugee camp in Lebanon, and the third is an online learning platform. The main hypothesis of this work states that the use of ICTs can, if implemented correctly, greatly improve the governments and related organizations efforts to solve the education crisis in Syria. Preliminary findings confirm that ICTs are a powerful tool that can aid in the process of rebuilding education. All of the three cases under study utilize ICTs mainly for the following activities: communication and coordination; training and capacity development; as means to provide access to education, and finally for data collection and information management purposes.