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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.

“We arrived at school at 7:30 a.m. as we always do on a school day. At exactly 8:30 we could hear shooting coming from the direction of a neighbouring village,” recalls Pafait Guei, a 14-year-old boy in sixth grade, who usually attends Beoua village primary school in western Côte d’Ivoire.

Pafait and his friends have not been in school since that day, on 17 March. Côte d’Ivoire has been through political crisis and violence following disputed presidential elections last year. Although the political deadlock has been resolved with the new President, Alassane Outtara, sworn in, there is still a tremendous push required to restore the volatile situation in the country.

UNICEF, with the support of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire and its partners, has been targeting one million children for the national ‘Back to School’ campaign in the 10 most vulnerable regions in the western and southern parts of the country.

At the end of this week, Southern Sudan will become an independent nation. Citizens of the newest country in the world, the people of Southern Sudan face immense challenges and immediate threats.

They also stand before a unique opportunity to build a country that is free of war, respectful of human rights and prosperous. Education will play a pivotal role in the future stability and economic development of Southern Sudan.

more than 100,000 Sudanese civilians have been displaced due to recent clashes over the contested border district of Abyei. About half of them are children who are being exposed to hunger, violence and disease. They are often separated from their parents and out of school due to the conflict.

"Should the current situation continue, every single province will be impacted, and many of Yemen's 4 million school-going kids could be affected," said Geert Cappelaere, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative in Yemen.     "If Yemen is to ever get out of its current, dire crisis, the single most important investment it can make right now is in the education of its people," Cappelaere said.      Yemen was grappling with poor education before the unrest. Some 40 percent of Yemenis suffer from illiteracy and soaring unemployment has especially hit the youth bulge of the country's 24 million people. 

October 19, 2011 (KAMPALA) – Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni says his country will send teachers to South Sudan as an effort to help the new nation build its human capacity and recover from decades of conflict that have badly affected literacy and the education system. Speaking at the opening of a leaders retreat for his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) on Monday in the town of Kyanykwanzi, president Museveni said this will aid job creation for his citizens.

UNESCO staff in Gaza recruited Souktel to create an SMS alert/survey system that warns parents and their children of any danger happening near local schools. The service forms a key part of UNESCO’s Crisis and Disaster Risk Reduction project, which aims to ensure that schools are secure community spaces.

"In conflict zones, when it's not safe to leave your house to get information, mobile phones can bridge the gap and keep everyone connected," says Souktel co-founder Jacob Korenblum. "This basic technology allows aid workers, educators and local families to stay in contact at all times." 

Here’s how it works: At each school, principals and teachers are given password-protected access to a web interface, where they can send SMS alerts to all parents’ mobile phones. In an emergency, they could write, "Attack near school today, please keep your children at home." Once the violence has ended, another message could go out saying, "Shelling has stopped; please come to school this morning."