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UN calls for better protection from attacks on schools « World Education Blog - 0 views

  • A new UN report supplies further evidence of the disturbing trend towards attacks on schools that we documented in the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education.
  • The annual report of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, released on May 11, finds that an increasing number of armed forces in conflicts around the world are deliberately attacking schools or forcing them to close. Attacks against schools and hospitals were reported in at least 15 of 22 conflicts that were monitored.
  • Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, stressed that schools must always be safe places of learning for children. “They should be zones of peace. Those who attack schools and hospitals should know that they will be held accountable,” she said.
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  • The report contains detailed information on violations against children in Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal, Occupied Palestinian Territories/Israel, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Southern border provinces of Thailand, Uganda and Yemen.
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    A new UN report supplies further evidence of the disturbing trend towards attacks on schools that we documented in the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education.
Teachers Without Borders

Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack - 1 views

  • Education under Attack  Students and educators in situations of armed conflict face violence every day. Schools and universities should be safe havens, where they can work toward a better future. Instead in many places they have become the targets of violent attacks for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious or criminal reasons. Students, teachers and academics are putting their lives at risk simply by showing up. A UNESCO study found intentional attacks of these types by state security forces or non-state armed groups in at least 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East between 2007 and 2009.Our vision We seek to establish a world in which all who wish to learn, teach and research, at all levels and in all forms of education, and all those who support them, can do so in conditions of safety, security, dignity and equality, free from fear, consistent with the principles of mutual understanding, peace, tolerance and academic freedom.Our mission To catalyse enhanced prevention of attacks on education, effective response to attacks, improved knowledge and understanding, better monitoring and reporting, stronger international norms and standards,and increased accountability.
Teachers Without Borders

Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack - 0 views

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    The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack is a unique inter-agency coalition formed in 2010 to address the problem of targeted attacks on education during armed conflict.
Teachers Without Borders

AFGHANISTAN: Avoid using schools in elections, say agencies - 0 views

  • KABUL, 17 June 2010 (IRIN) - Putting a polling station in a school would be run-of-the-mill in most countries, but in Afghanistan it can be an invitation to an attack by Taliban insurgents, opposed to the government and western-style democracy. Taliban rocket, grenade, gun and arson attacks on schools averaged about 50 a month last year. During the August 2009 elections, which the Taliban vowed to disrupt, the number hit 250 in that month alone, according to data compiled by aid agencies.
  • Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, student numbers have surged from less than one million in 2001 to about seven million in 2010. More than 30 percent of the students are female, according to the Ministry of Education (MoE).
  • According to research by Care International, in 2006-2008 about 1,153 attacks on educational facilities were reported. Some 230 people were killed in armed attacks on schools in 2006-2007, according to the MoE. Schools are an easy target for the Taliban, looking to demonstrate the government's impotence. "Girls' education is clearly targeted more than boys," stated Care's report of September 2009, which blamed the insurgents and other community members for the attacks.
Teachers Without Borders

Save the Children releases The Future is Now report - 1 views

  • Children and school buildings are increasingly becoming targets in conflicts across the world, warns Save the Children as one of the key findings of a report published today.
  • The organisation finds that the risks of violence to schoolchildren in conflict-blighted areas are on the rise as schools are increasingly used as symbolic, easy targets by armed groups. These risks to children will continue to grow unless the international community takes urgent action to protect them from attack.
  • The report - The Future is Now - points out that civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world's conflicts and about half of those are children. It warns that education is under attack by armed militias, criminal groups and even governments through the bombing of schools and is threatened by military interference in humanitarian work - all of which put children's lives in danger.
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  • Among the most dangerous countries is Afghanistan where between 2006 and 2009 there were 2,450 attacks on schools - in recent weeks, 50 schoolgirls in northern Afghanistan were reportedly left unconscious and sick after poison gas attacks by the Taliban. In the war-torn Helmand and Badghis provinces 80% children are out of school.
  • In Liberia 73%of primary-aged children are out of school. • In Somalia, 81% of school age children have no access to education.
  • They can and must be protected - in Nepal, where schools were being targeted by armed groups, Save the Children's introduction of schools as ‘Zones of Peace' directly led to a rise in attendance.
  • "Children in conflict zones should not have to forgo an education. Their schooling is crucial not only for their personal health and development but for the future peace of their communities - with every additional year of formal schooling, a boy's risk of becoming involved with conflict falls by 20%.
Teachers Without Borders

Militants target teachers in Pakistan's southwest-HRW - AlertNet - 0 views

  • Militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan are increasingly attacking teachers, college professors and other school personnel, pushing the education system in the southwest province to the "brink of collapse". New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report called "Their Future is at Stake" and released in Islamabad on Monday, that the attacks were forcing several hundred education officials to flee.
  • Critics say the government has failed to provide millions of with a proper education in Pakistan. Many poor Pakistanis can only afford to send their children to religious schools, which the critics say promote Islamic fundamentalism.
  • Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest but poorest province bordering Afghanistan and Iran, has large mineral reserves, including oil, gas, copper and gold.
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  • Out of fear of militant attacks, he said 200 teachers had transferred to jobs in safer areas, while another 200 were hoping to find jobs elsewhere.
Teachers Without Borders

The Right to Education for Children in Emergencies - 0 views

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    Abstract   h is paper presents the key international legal instrument relevant for education, their use and  links with policy frameworks and tools being developed by the humanitarian community to  address education rights of children in confl ict and emergencies. It describes the current thinking  around the right to education in emergencies and why education is a central right to uphold  from the onset of a crisis. It gives a brief introduction to how education can meet the international 
Teachers Without Borders

AFGHANISTAN: Struggling to improve education - 0 views

  • KABUL, 29 August 2010 (IRIN) - Education in Faryab Province, northern Afghanistan, has never been as good as it is now thanks to the dozens of new schools built by Norway.
  • Faryab is a success story in a country where almost half of the 12,600 schools nationwide do not have a building (classes are held in the open or in tents), officials said.
  • Norway’s flag and other official symbols are not used on the schools which, according to some experts, have helped keep them immune from armed attacks. Schools, students and teachers have often been attacked and harassed by gunmen allegedly associated with Taliban insurgents.
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  • n terms of education, the southern province of Helmand, severely affected by the insurgency, appears to lag far behind Faryab Province.
  • Though it has roughly the same population as Faryab, Helmand has only 282 schools of which over 150 have been closed due to insecurity and lack of teachers, provincial officials said.
  • “Building schools does not mean improving education - any more than building a hospital means improving health care,” adding that the focus on education was good but not at the cost of other important issues.
  • Up to seven million students are currently enrolled at schools across Afghanistan, according to the Education Ministry, indicating significant progress since 2001 when only two million (boys only) were enrolled.
  • However, about five million school-age children, mostly girls in the insecure southern and eastern provinces, are still being deprived of an education due to war, poverty, lack of schools and social restrictions, the Education Ministry said.
Teachers Without Borders

Reuters AlertNet - DRC: Where schools have flapping plastic walls - 0 views

  • KIWANJA, 19 July 2010 (IRIN) - It is a sunny day at the Mashango primary school in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) North Kivu Province. That is good news for teacher Dusaba Mbomoya who is holding a geography exam under a roof filled with holes in a classroom where flapping pieces of plastic do duty as walls. Even the blackboard has holes large enough for students to peer through. "When it rains we allow the pupils to go back to their houses," said Mbomoya.
  • Most classrooms are dark and crumbling with limited teaching materials. With the government opting out, Save the Children estimates that parents are forced to finance 80-90 percent of all public education outside the capital Kinshasa, though under the DRC's 2006 constitution elementary education is supposed to be free. Teachers' salaries go unpaid which means parents must contribute to their wages via monthly school fees of around US$5 per pupil. Large families and an average monthly income of just $50 means such fees are entirely unaffordable for large swathes of the DRC population - with serious consequences. Estimates from Save the Children and others suggest nearly half of Congolese children, more than three million, are out of school and one in three have never stepped in the classroom.
  • Save the Children's research shows that teachers' pay is so low and so irregular that many take on other jobs, such as farming, taking them away from their classrooms and students. The situation is particularly bad in North Kivu where hundreds of thousands have been uprooted by years of war. Some like Laurent Rumvu live in camps for the internally displaced. None of his five school-aged children are in regular education.
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  • Ransacked Schools in the area were closed for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 when fighting between rebel soldiers in the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP - now a political party) and the DRC army brought chaos to North Kivu. Children were forcibly recruited from schools by militia groups and the army and students and teachers were shot and abducted, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Schools were ransacked and many were occupied by either soldiers or IDPs.
  • After the war, he said 120 fewer pupils returned to classes. At Kasasa, CNDP soldiers occupied the school for several weeks, taking books and causing damage. Some pupils were killed during the fighting, and Nkunda said others were traumatized. "Of course the war has had an effect," he said. "Imagine going to school after your parents have been killed." Getting displaced children back in school is a priority for international agencies including the Norwegian Refugee Council.
  • "Education is extremely important to the future of Congo," said Mondlane. "With large numbers of displaced children it is extremely important to invest in education in this humanitarian crisis." "Bad government" Kasasa student Shirambere Tibari Menya, 22, lost four years of his schooling to war. Most recently, he fled to Uganda during the fighting in 2008 and is now close to finishing secondary school. But one obstacle remains - a one-off series of final exams which all DRC pupils must take before graduation. Tibari is confident he will pass and would like to go on to study medicine but says his family does not have the $12 he must pay to take the tests. "I don't accept that I'm going to lose another year, but you can see that we are studying in bad conditions," he said. "For our parents the main activity is to go to the fields, but they are raped and attacked so we have the problem of food and no money. "I blame the government. We are in a bad country with a bad government."
Teachers Without Borders

AFP: Taliban bus attack kills four boys in Pakistan - 0 views

  • PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Taliban ambushed a Pakistani school bus on Tuesday, killing four boys and the driver in a hail of bullets and rocket fire on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.The children studied at an elite English-language school of a type reviled by hardline Islamist militants who oppose what they see as Western-imported, secular education.Two seven-year-old girls on the bus were also wounded, officials said.
  • Police said the bus was taking children home at the end of the school day, which in Pakistan finishes in the early afternoon.Senior police official Kalam Khan said from the scene that four boys were killed along with the bus driver."The gunmen were waiting for the bus in fields and attacked when it came close. They fired a rocket and then fired bullets on the van," he said.
  • Shoaib Khan, a 15-year-old student wounded in the attack, said gunmen first opened fire on one side of the road, then waited for pupils to start fleeing before widening the attack.
Teachers Without Borders

Annotated Bibliography: Education for Youth Affected by Crisis | INEE Site - 1 views

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    Crises negatively affect the education and livelihood prospects of youth, which in turn can play a role in the perpetuation of fragility in post-crisis settings. The development and implementation of effective education and training for youth in contexts characterized by displacement, a breakdown of social services, and economic despair presents a broad spectrum of challenges. Yet, it is a necessary component of promoting self-sufficiency and long-term stability. This annotated bibliography aims to contribute to building the evidence base to effectively articulate and advocate for successful, quality education programming for all youth affected by crisis. The selection criteria for documents reviewed in this annotated bibliography were broadly defined as any texts dealing with, reviewing, analyzing, evaluating or describing educational programmes catering specifically or partially to youth and adolescents in situations of emergency, protracted crisis through to post-crisis and recovery. Preference was given to texts that address specific impacts and lessons learned. This review is not meant to be a mapping exercise of existing programmes and actors, rather it attempts to document specific impacts of programmatic approaches. To suggest additional articles to be included in the annotated bibliography or for further information, please contact youthtaskteam@ineesite.org or minimumstandards@ineesite.org.
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | ZIMBABWE: Thousands of girls forced out of education | Zimbabwe | Childre... - 0 views

  • HARARE, 7 November 2011 (IRIN) - Poverty, abuse and cultural practices are preventing a third of Zimbabwean girls from attending primary school and 67 percent from attending secondary school, denying them a basic education, according to a recent study which found alarming dropout rates for girls. ''Sexual harassment and abuse by even school teachers and parents, cultural issues, lack of school fees, early marriage, parental commitments and early pregnancies are some of the contributing factors to the dropout by the girl child,'' said the authors of "Because I am a Girl" by Plan International, a nonprofit organisation that works to alleviate child poverty.
  • According to the Plan International report, the long distances that children in rural areas have to travel to reach school, and the burden that girl children face because they often have to assume the responsibilities of being head of the household after the death of their parents, are other factors contributing to the high dropout rate for girls.
  • A 2005 government programme of forced evictions, known as Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out Trash), which uprooted some 700,000 people from urban areas across the country, compounded the difficulties of accessing education for girls from affected households. Amnesty International, in its report ''Left Behind: The Impact of Zimbabwe's Forced Evictions on the Right to Education'' released in October 2011, documents the ways in which the evictions disrupted the primary and secondary education of an estimated 222,000 children.
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  • The Amnesty International report notes that many girls at Hopley became sex workers, entered relationships with older men, or married at a young age after eviction from their homes, and the government's failure to support them to re-enrol in school.
  • Zimbabwe's education system, once considered a model for other African countries, has been steadily declining over the last decade due to the economic crisis. Many schools lack text books and other supplies.
Teachers Without Borders

UNICEF and partners help educate children displaced by conflict in DR Congo |... - 0 views

  • DR Congo, a vast country the size of Western Europe, has been mired in war and political unrest for decades. The United Nations has kept its largest peacekeeping mission here since 1999. It is also the world’s second poorest country, with 59 per cent of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
  • The gross enrolment rate for primary school in DR Congo – that is, the proportion of children of any age who are enrolled in primary school – decreased from almost 100 per cent 30 years ago to 64 per cent in 2005. Gross enrolment for girls today is at 58 per cent.
  • he programme is part of an initiative to place education in emergency and post-crisis transition countries on a viable path in order to achieve quality basic schooling for all children. “The school provides a protective environment,” UNICEF Goma Education Specialist Elena Locatelli said, noting that a few hours spent in the classroom each day also keeps children “occupied with activities that don’t let them think of the difficulties of their past.”
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  • “In the past, we would whip the children,” said Mr. Zirhumana Muzirhu. “But thanks to the psycho-social training, teachers and schoolchildren are now friends, so we don’t use the whip anymore.” The education-in-emergencies programme is also rehabilitating schools and providing school supplies and recreation kits, so that students can participate in regular activities that are crucial to their physical, mental, psychological and social development. In addition, the programme has provided more than 130,000 children with education kits in conflict-ravaged North Kivu Province in recent years.
  • By participating in group activities, children can express themselves and channel their trauma through song, poetry and dance. With this in mind, AVSI has been training teachers to nurture displaced and vulnerable children. The training has produced significant changes in the philosophy and practice of education in Walikale.
  • “I like going to school and hope to finish it, but I’m not sure if another war will break out and make me displaced again,” she said. “My biggest fear is, I don’t know if my children will finish school one day,” admitted her mother.
Teachers Without Borders

Education doesn't save lives, so why should we care? « World Education Blog - 1 views

  • Education is one of the hidden costs of conflict and violence. Almost 750,000 people die as a result of armed conflict each year, and there are more than 20 million displaced people in the world. Violent conflict kills and injures people, destroys capital and infrastructure, damages the social fabric, endangers civil liberties, and creates health and famine crises. What is less known or talked about is how violent conflict denies million of children across the world their right to education.
  • Armed violence often targets schools and teachers as symbols of community leadership or bastions of the type of social order that some armed factions want to see destroyed. Children are useful in armies as soldiers, as well as to perform a myriad of daily tasks from cooking and cleaning to sexual favours. Children need to work when members of their family die or are unable to make a living, and families remove children from school fearing for their lives and security.
  • profound long-term effects of educational losses among those exposed to conflict.
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  • In particular, relatively minor shocks to educational access – even as small as one less year of schooling – can have long-lasting detrimental effects on the children that are out of school, as well as on the human capital of whole generations.
  • But human capital – the stock of skills and knowledge we gain through education and experience – is the backbone of successful economic and social recovery. Ignoring these long-term consequences will endanger any attempts to rebuild peace, social justice and stability.
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Asia | AFGHANISTAN: Patchy progress on education | Afghanistan | Children | Econom... - 0 views

  • KABUL, 12 September 2011 (IRIN) - Despite billions of dollars in aid and government funding over the past decade, Afghanistan still has about four million school-age children out of school, officials say. "Overall our biggest challenge is our operating budget, which is not enough to cover the salaries of our teachers... and of the roughly 14,000 primary and secondary schools in the country, some 7,000 lack buildings, forcing children to study in the open, under trees or in tents," Education Ministry spokesman Aman Iman said.
  • "My class is very close to the main road - in a tent. Sometimes even stray dogs get in," Khan told IRIN. "Passing cars blow dust into our tent, which gets into our clothes, hair and even notebooks. I really do not want to go to school, but what can I do? My family is forcing me to go."
  • Currently, only eight million of the 12 million school-age children are in school, according to the Education Ministry.
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  • A major impediment to education is conflict. Some 500 schools are still closed in insecure southern and eastern areas due to fighting, assassinations and threats against teachers and students by different anti-government elements, according to the Ministry of Education.
Teachers Without Borders

Schools as Battlegrounds - Protecting Students, Teachers, and Schools from Attack - 1 views

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    Schools as Battlegrounds - Protecting Students, Teachers, and Schools from Attack
Teachers Without Borders

Education and conflict in Côte d'Ivoire: a deadly spiral « World Education Blog - 0 views

  • The political upheaval in Côte d’Ivoire is taking a heavy toll on education, especially in the north, illustrating starkly the devastating impact conflict can have on learning opportunities – and the vicious circle in which conflict and education can become trapped.
  • A teacher described his school in Abidjan, the commercial capital, as much better than others in the city: “There are around 63 students per teacher – that’s a small class; it’s considered good. But there are no tables, no chairs, sometimes there’s no light. Sometimes students take it in turns to come into the classroom to sit on the few chairs.”
  • This year’s Global Monitoring Report focuses on other ways in which education failures can stoke conflict – such as perpetuating prejudice instead of promoting tolerance, and failing to pass on the skills that children need to escape poverty. The report lays out practical steps that governments and the international community can take to make sure that education builds peace rather than fanning the flames of war.
Teachers Without Borders

Mexico's drug gangs aim at new target teachers - World AP - MiamiHerald.com - 1 views

  • Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers. Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers - and even the children.
  • To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins. Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."
  • Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.
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  • "We are scared," admitted Maria de Jesus Casio, principal of the Ramon Lopez Velarde Elementary School. But she also said teachers don't want to pay. "Teachers don't have much money. The salaries are just enough for survival." Teachers in this city earn an average of $650 a month. Christmas bonuses vary but the average is about a month's pay.
  • "The educational system is under threat by criminal groups," Javier Gonzalez, the under secretary for education in northern Chihuahua state, said in an interview. "We're just praying to God that there never is an event of this nature."
  • At the pre-primary school hit by arson Dec. 5, director Norma Pena said her school had been sacked of anything valuable. "They constantly rob from us - the metal bars from the fence, the air conditioners, even the swing sets," Pena said. "The laws are so soft. The laws are no good. When they catch someone, they let them go right away. The criminals threaten the authorities."
  • "We feel the caring and love people have for our school. This is what keeps us going," Casio said. But the crime gangs are sapping hope. "They respect no one. What is there to rob in this school? And we teachers, with our salaries, have even less."
Teachers Without Borders

PAKISTAN: Schools Rise From the Rubble - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

  • PESHAWAR, Jun 26, 2011 (IPS) - Violence in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan has kept students away from school, in some areas for at least two years. Now, officials are trying to make up for lost time by holding classes even under tents or trees.
  • "We are overwhelmed to be back in school," said third grade student Jaweria over the phone from Orakzai. The Taliban bombed her school in August last year, she said, leaving students idle.
  • Orakzai Agency is one of seven "agencies" or tribal units that constitute Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). FATA is the war-torn region between Afghanistan and the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in northwest Pakistan, which has become the base of the Taliban and Al- Qaeda.
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  • In Orakzai alone, militants blew up nearly 80 educational institutions, including several schools from primary to high school for boys and girls, and one Degree College for men. Last February, militants destroyed the lone Girls’ Degree College, whose 235 students continue holding classes atop the debris.
  • The move will put some 4,500 students back on track with their schooling, and employ 192 teachers as well.
  • "The students study under the shade of trees, while they use the tents to store their bags. This is because there is no electricity inside the tents while outside the students enjoy a good atmosphere," said teacher Shahidullah Khan. At the moment, the students use mats in lieu of school desks, which will be provided in the future, he added.
  • Khan said the FATA has 5,478 schools and colleges, hundreds of which have been damaged, depriving some 255,000 students of education. The government was forced to shut down another 18 due to violence, leaving more than 300 teachers jobless.
  • In Mohmand Agency, the militants flattened 108 schools affecting almost 90,000 students. The authorities said they have reopened 44 boys’ and 12 girls’ schools in tents, while the rest are being reconstructed.
  • These government-run schools are the only source of modern education for students in the FATA. They offer classes from the first to the 10th grade, but students have to source their own books and other school materials. Gibran Khan is another beneficiary of the tent school that was established on May 30. "I was sad when our school was destroyed in January this year but now I am happy," said Khan, a 12-year-old fifth grade student.
  • Statistics for female literacy in the FATA are also disturbing. Neighbouring KP province has a female literacy rate of 30 percent, but the rate is FATA is a mere three percent. The national literacy rate for females is 54 percent.
  • "We have launched a programme in which we are going to reconstruct damaged schools. The government of Japan is assisting in rebuilding 80 schools in FATA," said Ghafoor Khan, education officer of the FATA Secretariat.
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