Conflict keeps children out of school
BANGLADESH: Armed conflict is keeping 28 million children around the
world out of schools, where they are often targets of sexual abuse and
violence, according to a report released Tuesday by UNESCO.
The report titled “The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education”
said that 42 percent of children not enrolled in schools around the
world live in poor countries wracked by conflict.
This often leads to a vicious cycle in which poverty and lack of
development are reinforced by a lack of education, and the risk of
further conflict is heightened as millions of youths fail to find
employment.
“Armed conflict remains a major roadblock to human development in
many parts of the world, yet its impact on education is widely
neglected,” UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement
released at the report’s launch in Dakar. Thirty-five countries were
affected by armed conflict from 1999 to 2008, of which 15 are in
sub-Saharan Africa.
“Children and schools are on the front line of these conflicts with
classrooms, teachers and pupils seen as legitimate targets,” the
statement said.
In Afghanistan, at least 613 attacks on schools were recorded in
2009, up from 347 in 2008, while insurgents in northwestern Pakistan
have made numerous attacks on girls’ schools including one in which 95
girls were injured.
According to the report, insecurity and fear associated with sexual
violence keep young girls in particular out of school. Rape and sexual
violence have been widely used as a tactic of war in countries such as
Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra
Leone.
Liberia’s deputy minister for planning and research in the education
ministry, Rex Dahn Kadiker, told how a group of armed men invaded his
home village in 1990, forcing two girls to undress and raping them in
plain sight.
“There were no teachers around, no students around. It is obvious
that where there is civil conflict there is no education,” he said at
the launch.
Liberia, along with countries such as Burundi, Nigeria and Sierra
Leone, has the added risk of an especially young population, with over
60 percent under age 25, a “youth bulge” which could contribute to
violent conflict.
UNESCO warned that the system of humanitarian aid is failing
children, with aid skewed toward a small group of countries identified
as national security priorities, neglecting many of the world’s poorest
countries.
“Aid for basic education has increased more than fivefold in
Afghanistan over the past five years, but it has stagnated or risen more
slowly in countries such as Chad and the Central African Republic, and
declined in Ivory Coast,” reads the report. DAKAR, Wednesday, AFP |