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04.09.2012 - Education Sector

Literacy at the grassroots : Interview with Jessica Hjarrand

©UN Photo/UNAMA

In countries with the world’s lowest literacy rates, spreading literacy is UNESCO’s passion. What are the challenges involved? Meet Jessica Hjarrand, a UNESCO literacy specialist who works to implement literacy programmes helping children and adults enjoy the basic human right of learning how to read and write.

A 36-year-old American citizen, she has worked for UNESCO at the grassroots level in Afghanistan, Iraq (based in Amman) and South Sudan, where she is currently stationed and where literacy rates are the lowest in the world. In our extended interview, she gives us the stories behind the worrying statistics on literacy in post-conflict situations.

What struck you the most about literacy in Afghanistan, Iraq and South Sudan, respectively? 


All three countries have left deep impressions upon me. 

In Afghanistan, I remember sitting on the floor in a mosque as students took their examinations, some students as old as 80, studying under a teacher who was still in secondary school. The young teacher literally taught literacy in the morning and went to school in the afternoon. And the students praised this teacher as one of the best they had ever encountered!  

In Iraq, the impression was how proud people were of the fact that Iraq once had the best educational system in the Middle East, including for women. In the 1980s, it was declared illiteracy-free by UNESCO.  Today, with the exile of so many intellectuals and the continued insecurity, Iraq has one of the highest levels of illiteracy in the region.  However, there is a strong national memory of the “glory days”, and people I’ve met are determined to restore them. As one secondary-school student in Kurdistan said “We are the culture that taught the rest of the world how to read and write.”   

In South Sudan, the passion of Ministry officials in charge of literacy is very inspiring. There is a lot of capacity and motivation – the problem is funding, among other factors that are beyond their control.   

On my first week, I visited a vocational training site for women formerly with the fighting forces, run by the International Organization for Migration. It is part of the first Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) Programme. A group of women were learning cookery skills so they could open small restaurant stalls. They prepared a delicious meal for us and as we ate, formed a line and danced and sang, some with babies strapped to their backs.  When I asked my colleague to translate, he said: ‘”They are saying that they used to fight with guns and now they fight with pens and paper.”

What approach do you find works best in face-to-face encounters? 

Finding points of common reference, and trying to develop relationships around them – and finding out people’s stories. In those stories, there are strong people with hopes for the future. They may be victims in one sense, but they are not weak.  Women in Afghanistan, Iraq and South Sudan have been portrayed as victims, and in many ways they are. But they should not be defined as victims. There is an important difference between empathy and pity.  Literacy provides both women and men them an important tool to be able to share their opinions, thoughts and wishes with a wider audience.  Through these testimonies, they show their strength and their hopes for the future – that is what we want to support through all of our upstream work. 

A participatory approach has also proven to work best – our partners appreciate that we create space to bring people together, engage in cross-sectoral efforts that allow new partnerships to be formed and engage them in all aspects of the process. We excel when we do this.  UNESCO may not have its name stamped on backpacks and t-shirts, but we are invisibly stamped on all aspects of education within a country where we work. 

“In Afghanistan, we shipped literacy textbooks on the backs of donkeys”

How does UNESCO work in post-conflict situations? How do individuals work for UNESCO in post-conflict situations? 

It depends on the country. In Afghanistan in 2009, UNESCO conducted a pilot for directly implementing the Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA) programme with the government, and also with NGOs on some components, such as skills training. In Iraq, UNESCO is supporting the two Ministries of Education in planning, curriculum revision and material development, as well as mobilizing and building the capacity of civil society organizations who are delivering much of the literacy programming.  In South Sudan, UNESCO is working directly with the government and civil society, including setting up mechanisms to ensure better coordination, as well as working directly with the DDR Commission on implementing an integrated literacy programme for ex-combatants, the largest single group of illiterates.  It is a landmark programme for UNESCO. 

UNESCO’s programming often involves remote management, which has specific challenges.  Remote operations involve a great deal of solid partnership-building and trust. The partners are “our eyes and ears” since we simply cannot be everywhere due to security and/or weather-related situations.  Success depends on the capacity of partners to deliver quality literacy programming, and our capacity to monitor and evaluate them.  

In such contexts, your creativity is challenged daily because the normal infrastructure simply isn’t there.  In Afghanistan, for example, we shipped literacy textbooks on the backs of donkeys through remote provinces.  In training sessions we showed literacy facilitators how to use whatever materials are available, since simple teaching supplies aren’t there.  There is a need to learn (and teach others) how to overcome challenges through creativity and innovation. This is, in many ways, a global issue facing education. In my schooldays we made books that were hand illustrated and written by students using sticks as bindings.  The students loved those books, and it’s a technique I’ve tried to pass on to others.  

So, how do we work in post-conflict situations?  Creatively, innovatively, patiently and persistently…..and very cooperatively!  

Working in post-conflict situations can be difficult. Is being a woman an additional challenge?

Some of us joke that being a woman in post-conflict situation is sometimes like being a “third gender” – you look like a woman but you act like a man. “Acting like a man” means you can move about freely and have relative control over your own life. Because I’m relatively young, I feel I have to work extra hard to prove that I have something to offer as well. For the most part, I have unlimited freedom, and that is not the case for the vast majority of the people I have worked with. 

I try to see if from the perspective of others. How would I feel if a young woman from Iraq came and told me how to fix my education system?  Would I listen without being sceptical? I don’t generally feel scared to work in the places where I’ve worked, but I’ve felt that other people are curious about why I would make this choice.  

Can you give concrete examples of peace-building through literacy in post-conflict situations

The HIV and AIDS group in Iraq provides a clear example of this. 

In South Sudan, we are working to create linkages between literacy and other sectors, such as health, agriculture, labour.  We’re trying to show that in a country with a 27% literacy rate, change will not come if it is only seen as an education ministry problem. It has to be seen as everyone’s problem.  We’re advocating with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction to set up an inter-ministerial committee to draft a Literacy Policy for South Sudan that recognizes that all sectors and their respective ministries need to unite to address the literacy challenge. The Director-General of the Alternative Education System warned that “Medicine in the hands of an illiterate person can become poison if they cannot read the directions.”  He is right, and it’s our job to support him in spreading this message. 

The leadership of a country sets the tone in many ways, and when the leadership says literacy is a problem that we all need to focus on, then the country will listen. South Sudan is the youngest nation in the world, and has suffered through decades of a brutal conflict, with inter-ethnic fighting still raging in some states.  One Ministry partner said that the word “peace” in every language in South Sudan is translated as “no war”.  So, we all agreed that one of the slogans for the National Literacy Conference this year will be: “In South Sudan we no longer have war.  But do we have peace?”  They are conceptualizing peace as the absence of the conditions that can create conflict, and this has direct linkages to development of their nation.   Peace-building, if it is to be sustainable, takes a long time.

UNESCO is also an implementing partner in the DDR programme in South Sudan for ex-combatants.  We are developing a comprehensive literacy, life skills and vocational training programme for ex-soldiers, hoping that having fought for their independence, they need to engage in another fight – to build the nation they have suffered so long to have. We hope that this will contribute to a lasting peace.

International Literacy Day is on 8 September. What message would you like people to receive?

Literacy is at the core of the human right to education.  Creating motivation for literacy creates people who invest in themselves. Investing in yourself sends the message that you are worth other people’s investment as well. Pro-active action on your own behalf, to change a situation that you no longer want in your own life is the foundation of democracy.  Of all the things that a nation can give its people, one things that can never be taken away is literacy and education.  As one woman said about illiterate women working in her small business, “South Sudanese women learn things, they put it in their mind.  And once it’s there, they carry it with them everywhere.�




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