Introduction

Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with Early Years – The Organization for Young Children, based in Northern Ireland – have pioneered the development of the preschool peacebuilding program for Northern Ireland. This has, in turn, inspired the establishment of the International Networking Group on Peacebuilding with Young Children, led by Early Years and the International Centre for Education and Human Development in Colombia (CINDE).

This current Network includes early child development specialists and organizations from a number of conflict-affected countries including: Colombia, Croatia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Nepal, South Africa and West Bank and Gaza Strip. As part of the development of this International Networking Group, Queen’s was instrumental in leading the development of its signature publication on early child development and peacebuilding: From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Power of Early Childhood Initiatives – Lessons from Around the World.

More recently, Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with Early Years and UNICEF, and with the support of global research centers at Yale, Harvard and New York University, has been funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) of the United Kingdom to support an international research group on early childhood development for peacebuilding from eight low- and middle-income countries affected by conflict (Colombia, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste and Vietnam).

Explore this work area by scrolling through each of the sections and subsections below.