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Rana Najadeh, 12, recalled her horror as she bore witness to the destruction. “I got very scared when the soldiers came to demolish our class,” she said. “I rushed out to check on my six year old brother Suleiman, who was crying.” The demolition did not end there, however, as nine other residential structures were also destroyed that day, leaving 30 children and their families homeless. 

Thankfully, UNICEF and Islamic Relief Worldwide took action to address the tragic situation, by rehabilitating the school and providing a better environment for the students. In addition, UNICEF partnered with both the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), to help the traumatized children find relief from their fear and anger by providing psychosocial sessions through dance, drama, arts and play.

amic Relief Worldwide took action to address the tragic situation, by rehabilitating the school and providing a better environment for the students. In addition, UNICEF partnered with both the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), to help the traumatized children find relief from their fear and anger by providing psychosocial sessions through dance, drama, arts and play. “Sometimes for children it is simply the opportunity to play and have fun – be a child – in a safe environment,” said UNICEF Deputy Special Representative, Douglas G. Higgins. “In the end, the psychosocial project is important for children to have a sense of stability, normality and opportunity to reach their potential.” Dkaika children are not the first ones to receive help however, as UNICEF has worked with ECHO since 2003 to help Palestinian children and their families cope with the conflict and violence that affects their daily lives. The activities focus on children who live in areas exposed to frequent home and school demolitions, as well as young Bedouins and children with disabilities. “We must not fail Dkaika children,” said the Deputy Special Representative. ”Education is the cornerstone for peace and security and is at the heart of equity.” var emailarticleloc = location.href; emailarticleloc = emailarticleloc.replace("http://www.unicef.org",""); emailarticleloc = emailarticleloc.replace("http://unicef.org",""); var emailarticle = "Email this article Email this article UNICEFBLOG.addentry({ linkClassName: "bloglink", image: "", title: "UNICEF provides support to Palestinian students through rehabilitation and psychosocial sessions", blurb: "DKAIKA, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 29 September 2011 - Located just 70 metres away from the Green Line - the 1949 Armistice Line – in Israeli-controlled Area ‘C’, the villagers of Dkaika are forced to suffer under the daily risk of home demolition and harassment. 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"I used to find children having panic attacks at night," says Dr. Bertrand. "But since the classes started, I haven't seen kids nearly so distressed."

For Taïma, as for many children, the prospect of going back to school is exciting. "It'll be a great day for me, especially the math and French classes," she says, referring to her favourite subjects.

"When I get to school," she says, "I will also find out which of my friends are alive, and which ones are dead."

"...Although the overall number of children aged 5 to 17 in hazardous work declined between 2004 and 2008, the number aged 15 to 17 actually increased by 20 per cent during the same period. It increased from 52 million to 62 million," reads the report.

"It is difficult to establish facts and figures about Child Labour, that is why we have to apply different techniques thus creating relationships with people involved in child labour," said Ms Kort emphasising that children below 14 years are not supposed to work while children aged 14 to 17 are supposed to do light work. Ms Helen Grace Namulwana, the Platform for Labour Action senior programme Officer in charge of child labour said there is need to enhance the fight for the children at the risk of falling into labour because it is their right to go to school.

We criticise any acts that get said children involved in child labour and we believe that every child has a right to education, so nothing should stand in the way to observing those rights," said Ms Namulwana.

The shortage is so great," he says, "that those who do come into the system choose where they will work. We do not have the resources to pay incentives to place them where they are most needed.''

During the war, people with only a grade 3 or 4 education became teachers. Since 2002, the pressure to meet MDG2 and to reduce Angola's 27% teenage illiteracy rate has seen the country recruit thousands of untrained school-leavers into teaching.

Currently, anyone with a grade 10 education can sit the exam to become a teacher.

"We estimate that around 40% of our teachers are not properly qualified. So far, training initiatives have reached about 3,000 teachers in the province. The scheme needs to be expanded to reach more teachers across more subjects,'' he says.

"I am doing my best,'' says Florinda, who has a grade 10 education and eight years' experience as a teacher. She hopes in due course to be given on-the-job training. "I would love to learn some methods for animating my teaching. But to tell you the truth, in all this dust and heat, if I can just keep their attention for a whole lesson I feel I have done well.''

Education in the Eastern Cape is in crisis, and the central government has taken over the running of the department after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

But the Eastern Cape is not alone. The growth of low-cost primary schools, in response to a lack of faith in the state sector, is a trend that is spreading across the country. The independent sector has grown by 75% in the past decade.

In a recent speech, Basic Education Minister Angie Motsheka revealed that 1,700 schools are still without a water supply and 15,000 schools are without libraries.

"We have research from various communities, and increasingly from government, saying that in many places, teachers are not in school on Mondays or Fridays, that many teachers have other jobs simultaneously and the actual amount of teaching going on in the classrooms is a fraction of what it should be," she says.

But more than 17 years after the end of white minority rule, observers argue that South Africa is struggling with more recent phenomena: Poor teacher training, corruption and maladministration, a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale.

This month, the central government said Limpopo, which has recorded some of the country's worst results in standardised testing, had unauthorised expenditure of 2.2 billion rand ($275 million). The province had more than 2,400 teachers on the payroll, including 200 "ghost teachers" who were not in classrooms but were still paid.

Hundreds of schools do not have electricity or running water and absenteeism has become such a concern that President Jacob Zuma has begged teachers to show up for classes. A study by graft watchdog Transparency International last year pointed to massive local level corruption resulting in millions of students not having desks, chairs or books.

A cosy relationship between the ANC and organised labour, formed in their partnership against apartheid, has hampered apprenticeship programmes.

Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said the attacks were committed by Muslim men speaking Hausa and Fulani against Christians, mostly of the Berom ethnicity. Civil society leaders in Jos said that the attacks appeared to be in retaliation for previous attacks against Muslim communities in the area and the theft of cattle from Fulani herdsmen. On January 19, more than 150 Muslim residents were killed in an attack on the nearby town of Kuru Karama.

Witnesses to the killings, community leaders from Jos, and journalists who visited the villages told Human Rights Watch that they saw bodies, including corpses of young children and babies, inside houses, strewn around the streets, and in the pathways leading out of the villages. A Christian leader who participated today in a mass burial of 67 bodies in Dogo Nahawa said that about 375 people are dead or still missing. Journalists and community leaders who visited the town said that many homes, cars, and other property were burned and destroyed.

After the worst of the mid-January violence in and around the nearby town of Kuru Karama, Jonathan pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice. "Those found to have engineered, encouraged or fanned the embers of this crisis through their actions or pronouncements will be arrested and speedily brought to justice," he said. "We will not allow anyone to hide under the canopy of group action to evade justice. Crime, in all its gravity, is an individual responsibility, not a communal affair." While Jonathan's commitments are a step in the right direction, they need to be followed with credible investigations and prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

Nigeria is deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines. More than 13,500 people have died in religious or ethnic clashes since the end of military rule in 1999. The outbreak of violence south of Jos on March 7 is the latest in a series of deadly incidents in and around Plateau State.

An unprecedented outbreak of violence in Jos claimed as many as 1,000 lives in September 2001; more than 700 people died in May 2004 in inter-communal clashes in the town of Yelwa in the southern part of Plateau State; and at least 700 people were killed in the violence in Jos on November 28 and 29, 2008. Human Rights Watch documented 133 cases of unlawful killings by members of the security forces in responding to the 2008 violence. Sectarian clashes broke out again in Jos on January 17 and quickly spread to neighboring communities, including Kuru Karama.

Human Rights Watch urged the Nigerian government to take concrete steps to end policies that discriminate against "non-indigenes" - people who cannot trace their ancestry to those said to be the original inhabitants of an area - which fuel tension and underlie many of these conflicts. The federal government should pass and enforce legislation prohibiting government discrimination against non-indigenes in all matters that are not purely cultural or related to traditional leadership institutions, Human Rights Watch said.