“Education is a fundamental right”, said Ban Ki-Moon “and the basis for progress in every country. On the International Day of Peace, it is the indispensable relationship between education and the foundation of sustainable peace that stands to attention. In the Post-2015 framework, assuring quality education for all is not just a laudable goal. It is a means to securing a more inclusive, more sustainable, and eventually, more peaceful society.

Young people from all over the world want education

We all know the importance of education. As the Dutch youth representative to UNESCO, I often speak to teenagers about development strategies. I ask them to think of one thing that is important to young people all around the world. Usually, it doesn’t take them much more than a split second to raise their hands and shout: “Education!”

My follow-up question is: “Why is education important?” Young people usually respond that education helps you get somewhere in life. When I ask: “Why should everyone enjoy good education”, someone invariably says: “Because the right to education is a human right so everyone deserves it”.

But I continue: “So why does everyone ‘deserve’ an education?” They look puzzled by my question. Slowly, somebody raises a hand and says, carefully checking my face for signs of approval: “Isn’t it because it is good for everybody if people have an education?” And I stand up and applaud the courageous answer.

Education is at the core of the post-2015 development goals

Because what they said is true.

Education is not only a goal. It is a means to an end.

A few days ago, UNESCO, EFA and GEFI published a report outlining the need for education to attain all of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals likely to end up in the post-2015 agenda.

For how can gender equality be attained without girls being able to enjoy a quality education? How can people take care of their environment if they don’t know how to, or that it’s important? How can productivity increase, leading to economic development, if knowledge and efficiency are not available? How can people attain higher standards of health if not for knowledge of the causes of illnesses, the need for vaccinations, and the trust in medical professionals?

Sustainable goals to create a better world

Education is the means through which the post-2015 agenda can be fulfilled, but the agenda itself has an overarching end. That end is enshrined in its sixteenth goal, which is to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”.

To understand this goal, we need to ask more questions. What causes conflict? Where does conflict start? Too often, the answer is individual fear, hopelessness and suffering; it is resentment against authorities or material and environmental circumstances without the perceived possibility of improving these. With fear comes intolerance. With powerlessness comes hopelessness. With resentment comes aggression.

Education brings hope

But with education comes hope. By educating people about the world around them, we promote respect for rights and freedoms and enhance understanding of different social groups.

People who have finished secondary education are better able and more inclined to participate in decision-making, leading to more inclusive and representative systems that take into account the voices of others.

Through education disenfranchised groups are able to voice their concerns; women gain greater opportunities; young children are more likely to be fed nutritious food and not get stunted in their development. Educated people both know their rights and are able to claim them.

Through education, more people are able to enter the official economic system in a productive manner; both individual and country-wide prosperity rises, and conflicts between states diminis. Inequality between groups of individuals within a state decreases, and with that, resentment. A 10% increase in the male enrollment ratio would result in the risk of wars declining by a quarter. Even common street violence in Sub-Saharan Africa was reduced when the number of people attending secondary education increased.

Education needs to be adequately funded

All this screams: “Hope!” But there is one problem: education costs money, and quality education costs more money. Meanwhile, donor countries are cutting down on their education spending. The Netherlands, a world leader in education investment and knowledge just a few years ago, has cut itself loose from almost all structural involvement and reduced its donation to education in developing countries to €30 million. At the same time, corruption in recipient countries is eating away at the funding from the other side. The irony is: corruption can be solved only through education.

But education really doesn’t have to cost that much. Providing basic education to all children in 46 low- and middle-income countries would cost an additional $26 billion annually. By comparison, global military spending in 2012 amounted to $1.7 trillion. Basic education represents only 1.5% of that – a mere drop in the ocean. It seems we are more willing to go to war than to combat its origins.

Education builds a better world

In the end, education paves the way for that other great goal permeating the development discourse of late: global citizenship. Through education, people better understand their position within their region, their country, and the world; they have the tools to actively participate, develop themselves and their countries.

So yes, education is a fundamental right. But providing education is also a duty. A self-serving duty. A catalyst for all sorts of development. And thereby, a catalyst for peace. Victor Hugo said in Les Miserables: “Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”