Building on the Millennium Development Goals, the UN Sustainable Development Goals are the cornerstone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, billed by the UN as “An Agenda of unprecedented scope and significance.” The seventeen ambitious goals, which are intended to be reached by 2030, are conceived as integrated, indivisible, and as balancing the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. They are organized around five core pillars:

• People: ending poverty and hunger and ensuring that all human beings can lead fulfilling lives in a healthy and dignified environment.
• Planet: protecting the environment while ensuring sustainable use and management of natural resources.
• Prosperity: ensuring environmentally sustainable economic growth, mutual prosperity, and decent work for all.
• Peace: building societies that are peaceful, just and inclusive, and in which human rights and gender equality are respected.
• Partnership: strengthening global solidarity to address inequalities within and between countries, by focusing on the needs of the most vulnerable.

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This Research Topic addresses the sixteenth Sustainable Development Goal, which is to “promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies”. Progress toward this goal is measured by a number of individual targets and indicators.

In its most recent SDG progress report, the UN notes how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed discrimination and inequalities and has tested, weakened, and sometimes damaged protection systems and rights in territories and countries. The world is still far from achieving the goal of building peaceful, just and inclusive societies: millions of people are currently living in fragile and conflict-affected areas (in 2019, 79.5 million people have been displaced with force worldwide and around 437,000 people were victims of homicide), and almost 28.5 million out of school children in primary school age live in areas afflicted by war.

Moreover, violence against children was widespread even before the pandemic, with more than 1 billion children affected around the world, costing societies up to US$ 7 trillion a year. In addition, in 2019 the percentage of prisoners held in detention without being sentenced remained at 31% of the total prison population.

By 2030, this Goal aims at significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates worldwide; manage to end exploitation, trafficking, abuse and violence against and torture of children; promote the importance of law at both national and international levels to guarantee equal access to and justice for all.

The report eventually notes and urges the need for swift action to get back on track towards achieving just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

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This Research Topic will address the sixteenth Sustainable Development Goal from an education-specific perspective. Themes welcomed may include, but are not limited to:
• Early childhood care and education
• The role of teachers in discussing about peace, equality, and justice at schools
• The role of an educated society towards achieving social equality
• The importance of free access to education
• Promoting education to develop just societies
• Teaching about human rights in primary and secondary schools
• Education as mean to understand community violence
• Teaching equality, participation, fairness, and shared responsibility
• The role of education institutions in preventing violence against children
• Prevention, intervention and risk factors with respect to forms of violence against children: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, murder and other forms of violence related to criminal organizations, such as child prostitution, sex trafficking and organ trafficking

Ample space should be also devoted to the prevalence and risk factors related to different forms of violence, with particular reference to less investigated forms of violence or to new emerging trends in child criminality. Work that examines mechanisms and factors related to prevention and treatment, as well as the effectiveness of these interventions, will also be encouraged.

Given the setbacks in the world due the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s edition of the Research Topic will focus particularly on the challenges and complexities of promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

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Frontiers in Education

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