The paper concludes with provisional policy recommendations and suggestions for future research. The 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (EFA) and the 2000 Dakar World Education Forum reaffirmed that the right to education persists even in situations of armed conflict. Education in emergencies has increasingly become seen as the ‘fourth pillar of humanitarian action’ (Machel, 2001: 94) along with food, health and shelter and as a means of protection in itself (Nicolai and Triplehorn, 2003).