Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty, improving health, leading to gender equality, and creating peace and stability. Education delivers large and consistent returns in terms of income and it is the most important factor in ensuring equity and inclusion. This is in line with SDG 4: Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. For individuals and households, education promotes employment, earnings, better health, and poverty reduction. Studies indicate that globally, there is a 9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling. (World Development Report 2018).

It is also important to note that: ‘being female, being poor, and living in a region affected by conflict or insurgency are three of the most persuasive risk factors for children being out of school’. In conflict environments, schools close, either because they are a direct target of attacks by Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) or because teachers have fled leaving no one to teach, or because parents are too frightened to send their children to school or are themselves in a process of repeated forced displacement to safer areas. The spread and intensification of conflict are having an ever more devastating effect on access to and continuity of learning, affecting the future of entire generations of children. (UNESCO, UNHCR, IOM, ACLED Insecurity Insight 2022).

For over 5 decades, the Karamoja region has faced insurgency caused by cattle rustling.  This insurgency has not only distorted socioeconomic development in the region but has also grossly affected access to education. The Faculty of Education and Peace Studies at Karamoja Peace and Technology University (KAPATU) will offer transformative higher education focused on 21st-century skills for self-reliance and community development. The approach of the faculty will be an integration of formal education, peace education, human rights, and psycho-social support to integrate the community members who have faced the trauma of violence.