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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.

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.

"When wars break out, international attention and media reporting invariably focus on the most immediate images of human suffering. Yet behind these images is a hidden crisis. Across many of the world's poorest countries, armed conflict is destroying not just school infrastructure, but the hopes and ambitions of generations of children."

According to the report's data, 21 developing countries spend more on arms than on primary schools. Meanwhile, only 2% of humanitarian aid goes towards education (with the vast majority of aid requests for education in conflict-affected states left unfulfilled).

The consequences are stark. In poor countries affected by conflict: 28 million children of primary school age are out of school (42% of the world's total) a child is twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday (compared with a child born in a poor but stable country) about 30% of the young people aged 15-24 are illiterate (compared with 7% in other poor countries)

The annual report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict presents information about grave violations committed against children in 22 country situations. The report also includes what is known as the “List of shame”. This is the list of  armed groups and armed forces who recruit and use children, kill and maim, commit sexual violence or attacks on schools and hospitals in conflict zones.

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.

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.

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.

Nigeria's acting president should make sure that the massacre of at least 200 Christian villagers in central Nigeria on March 7, 2010, is thoroughly and promptly investigated and that those responsible are prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said today.

The latest killings in Nigeria's restive Plateau State took place in the early morning hours of March 7, when groups of men armed with guns, machetes, and knives attacked residents of the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot, and Ratsat, 10 kilometers south of Jos, the capital of Plateau State. The dead included scores of women and children.

"This kind of terrible violence has left thousands dead in Plateau State in the past decade, but no one has been held accountable," said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.