Impact of Armed Conflict on Education
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 5 Sep 2016
Shree Prasad Devkota – TRANSCEND Media Service
5 Sep 2016 – There is a growing body of evidence that armed conflict attacks on education have occurred in countries all over the world. These attacks have targeted teachers, students, academics and ancillary staff including shuttle drivers and night watchmen. A large number of teachers, students, academics and educational personnel are killed, injured, abducted, forced to being a soldier, laborer, or are disappeared. Conflicting parties also damage or demolish education buildings and facilities, including transport; occupy education buildings and facilities for military/security purposes during the period of armed conflict.
In situations of armed conflict and insecurity, deliberate attacks on and threats against education is a barrier to the right to education and a serious protection issue. In a range of conflict-affected countries, access to education is being reduced or denied not merely by the side effects of fighting but because schools, teachers and students were being targeted for attack. Violent conflict is destroying educational opportunities for millions of children. It is destroying not just school infrastructure, but also the hopes and ambitions of a whole generation of children. This paper examines some countries’experiences of attacks on education.
Experiences of Attack on Education in Selected Countries
Armed conflict affects the education in many ways. It results in the death or displacement of family members, teachers, staff and students. For instance, more than two-third of teachers in primary and secondary schools were killed and displaced as a result of the Rwandan genocide (Buckland, 2005). According to the government source, non-state armed groups, including the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP), Los Rastrojos, Los Urabeños and Los Paisas, have threatened teachers leading community initiatives against sexual violence and child recruitment and killed 2 teachers in 10 departments in 2010. Ministry of Education data reports that 222 innocents teacher have been killed since the conflict began. Some human rights organizations havereported that more than 640 educational staffs have been killed and more than 1300 arrested by government security force.
School children in Nepal’s Matatirtha village practice an earthquake drill in the event of a natural disaster. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal on Apr. 25, 2015, has endangered the lives of close to a million children. Credit: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/CC-BY-2.0
Likewise, Cambodia and Somalia have experienced similar extreme cases. In 1970, the Cambodian educational system was left in ruins with virtually no trained or experienced teaching professionals. Federation Colombiana de Educadores listed 310 murders of teachers between 2000 and 2006. On average, 42 teachers are murdered every year in Colombia. The report listed 11000 irregular combatants asrecruited child soldiers who were mostly between age 7 and 13.State collapse in Somalia coupled with targeted attacks on educational infrastructure ground the country’s educational system to a halt. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, 50% of its schools required repair or reconstruction. More than 58% of primary schools in Mozambique had been closed and destroyed as a result of its long armed conflict.
During the era of armed conflict of Iraq, destruction of schools was 85%. Iraq experienced 31,500 violent attacks on education between the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 and October 2008. Thestatisticsfurther specifies that 280 academies have been killed since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003,296 education staff members were killed in 2005 and 180 teachers was killed between February and November 2006.More than 200 universities students were killed in one month in January 2007. And 100 government officers from the Ministry of Educationwere kidnapped. Most of them were found dead. More than 700 school going children have been killed and 500 remained injured in Iraq armed conflict. At least 950000 school children are affected. During 51 days of conflict of Gaza Strip, 551 Palestinian children were killed and 3370 were injured.
In the same way, in 1999, thousands of children were abducted and given guns to fight in Liberia and there were many reports of attacks on schools. After the peace process, 11,780 children were demobilized from the fighting forces. The data provided by the Government of Pakistan reports that 356 schools were destroyed or damaged in one small region at the centre of the battle between the Army and the Taliban. In Pakistan’s Swat district, 40 per cent of boys and 80 per cent of girls who had previously been enrolled in school did not return to school eleven months after the Taliban lost control to the Pakistan army in an area where most of the schools had been destroyed or damaged in attacks. In India, large numbers of schools were reportedly blown up by Maoist rebels between 2006 and 2009. India, officials estimated that more than 100,000 children have been denied access to primary education in Bastar Region since 2005, where it has been reported that 440 school buildings have been bombed by Maoist rebels and the majority of teachers refuse to attend school due to the risk to their lives. Gaza faced similar problem.More than 300 kindergarten, school and university buildings were damaged or severely damaged in three weeks during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead at the turn of 2008-09. In Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, many teachers and children have been killed and schools were burned over the past five years. In 2008 and 2009, sixty-three students and twenty-four teachers and education personnel were killed or injured.
Other many countries (like Bosnia, Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Zimbabwe etc.) have also experienced the attacks on education. UNESCO (2010) explored that Afghanistan, witnessed a dramatic increase in attacks on schools, from 242 in 2007 to 670 in 2008. In 2006, militants killed 85 students and teachers and destroyed 187 schools in Afghanistan. According to Human Rights Watch report, more than 190 bombings, arson and shooting attached on teachers and students in 2006. Similarly, 670 schools remained closed in early 2009, depriving 170,000 children of their right to education in a country where half the school-age population does not go to school. In Sierra Leone, by the end of the conflict many children had missed two to three years’ schooling and in one year an entire academic year was reportedly lost. Six years on, nearly one in three primary-aged children still did not go to school due to a combination of destroyed infrastructure and other factors. In the Central African Republic, more than half of the country’s schools remain closed following the Séléka rebel coalition’s takeover of the country in April 2013.
The education of 1 million children has been jeopardised as a result. In Mali, following widespread attacks on schools, more than 1,500 schools in the north of the country are in need of repair, new equipment and removal of weapons. The conflict has disrupted the education of more than 700,000 children. In Syria, by January 2013 an estimated 3,900 schools had been destroyed or occupied for purposes other than education and are now rendered unusable for education purposes. Estimates in April 2013 show a very rapid increase in this number, with 22% of the country’s 22,000 schools rendered unusable. The combined effects of conflict have jeopardized the education of 2.5 million school-age children and young people.
Conclusion
Hence, armed conflict has adversely affected the education sector all over the world. Conflicting partiesare failed to respect the universal values of human rights and to accept educational institutes as zones of peace. Conflicting parties intentionally target schools, teachers and students. They violet the rights of the children, in addition to putting children to the risk of injury or death, they can thwart students’ chance to get education. Schools are bombed, classrooms are used as barracks, teachers are threatened and killed, and children are recruited as soldiers, servants, and slaves. The result is a rising fear among children to attend school, among teachers to teach classes, and among parents to send their children to school.
Attack on education threaten the capacity of a state or its institutions to provide education services, by driving away teachers, destroying infrastructure which can take years to rebuild, and hindering the capacity to manage the education system.The impact of armed conflict on education has been consistently and systematically underestimated. Targeting on education, children and schools, are snatching away the opportunities for education on unprecedented scale.
The impact of conflict on education has significant hidden and long-term costs. Millions of children being robbed of an education. And an attack on education is based not just on the impact of such violence on education systems and on progress towards Education for All, but also on the impact on social and economic development. As a result, the education crisis risks reinforcing poverty, undermining economic growth, and fueling additional conflicts around the world.
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Shree Prasad Devkota is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He is a Kathmandu University graduate, has a Master’s in Mathematics Education and M.phl in Development Studies. Currently he is chairperson of SDEF–Sustainable Development and Empowerment Forum, and has worked as a lecturer. He is researcher in the field development sectors in Nepal and has worked as consultant, monitoring and evaluation expert in different I/NGOs. Devkota has been working in the field of education of children, marginalized and socially excluded groups, especially on conflict management regarding the post-conflict situation in Nepal. He has published several research articles in national and international journals. Books: Teacher’s Lived Experiences and Contextualized Mathematics, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, 2012. Education in Nepal from Dalit Perspective, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, 2013. Conflict in School and Its Management by Shree Prasad Devkota and Shiba Bagale, Scholars’ Press, Germany, 2015.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 5 Sep 2016.
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