Teachers Without Borders's List: Education Under Attack

• KABUL, 29 August 2010 (IRIN) - Education in Faryab Province, northern Afghanistan, has never been as good as it is now thanks to the dozens of new schools built by Norway.
• Faryab is a success story in a country where almost half of the 12,600 schools nationwide do not have a building (classes are held in the open or in tents), officials said.
• Norway’s flag and other official symbols are not used on the schools which, according to some experts, have helped keep them immune from armed attacks. Schools, students and teachers have often been attacked and harassed by gunmen allegedly associated with Taliban insurgents.
• n terms of education, the southern province of Helmand, severely affected by the insurgency, appears to lag far behind Faryab Province.
• Though it has roughly the same population as Faryab, Helmand has only 282 schools of which over 150 have been closed due to insecurity and lack of teachers, provincial officials said.
• “Building schools does not mean improving education - any more than building a hospital means improving health care,” adding that the focus on education was good but not at the cost of other important issues.
• Up to seven million students are currently enrolled at schools across Afghanistan, according to the Education Ministry, indicating significant progress since 2001 when only two million (boys only) were enrolled.
• However, about five million school-age children, mostly girls in the insecure southern and eastern provinces, are still being deprived of an education due to war, poverty, lack of schools and social restrictions, the Education Ministry said.

6 more annotations...

• Thousands of children in three of Yemen’s 21 governorates have stopped going to school for fear of being targeted by revenge killings, according to international NGO Partners-Yemen (PY)
• PY has been getting children in schools that remain open to chant the slogan "To those who deprived me of my father; don't deprive me of my education", but thousands of children have stopped going to school for fear of crossing tribal boundaries.
• "I haven't gone to school since 2005 when I was in grade six. I fear that armed tribesmen from Hamdan tribe may kill me,"
• The three governorates have a high illiteracy rate: "Fifty-six percent of the male population and 70 percent of the female population… are illiterate," he said.
• Revenge killings have led to the closure of several schools, especially in al-Jawf and Shabwa governorates. The situation is not quite so bad in Marib, said PY.
• "As many as eight schools in Maraziq and Al Sayda areas have been closed for five years now," he said, adding that thousands of boys and girls had dropped out of education as a result.
• more than a dozen schools in his governorate have been deserted for several years as a result of revenge killings.
• Few students have moved to other safer areas to complete their education; most have stopped going to school since then," he said.

6 more annotations...

• Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers.

    Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers - and even the children.

• To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins.

  Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."
• Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.

• "We are scared," admitted Maria de Jesus Casio, principal of the Ramon Lopez Velarde Elementary School. But she also said teachers don't want to pay. "Teachers don't have much money. The salaries are just enough for survival."

  Teachers in this city earn an average of $650 a month. Christmas bonuses vary but the average is about a month's pay.
• "The educational system is under threat by criminal groups," Javier Gonzalez, the under secretary for education in northern Chihuahua state, said in an interview. "We're just praying to God that there never is an event of this nature."

• At the pre-primary school hit by arson Dec. 5, director Norma Pena said her school had been sacked of anything valuable.

  "They constantly rob from us - the metal bars from the fence, the air conditioners, even the swing sets," Pena said. "The laws are so soft. The laws are no good. When they catch someone, they let them go right away. The criminals threaten the authorities."
• "We feel the caring and love people have for our school. This is what keeps us going," Casio said. But the crime gangs are sapping hope. "They respect no one. What is there to rob in this school? And we teachers, with our salaries, have even less."

5 more annotations...

• Militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan are increasingly attacking teachers, college professors and other school personnel, pushing the education system in the southwest province to the "brink of collapse".

  New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report called "Their Future is at Stake" and released in Islamabad on Monday, that the attacks were forcing several hundred education officials to flee.
• Critics say the government has failed to provide millions of with a proper education in Pakistan. Many poor Pakistanis can only afford to send their children to religious schools, which the critics say promote Islamic fundamentalism.
• Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest but poorest province bordering Afghanistan and Iran, has large mineral reserves, including oil, gas, copper and gold.
• Out of fear of militant attacks, he said 200 teachers had transferred to jobs in safer areas, while another 200 were hoping to find jobs elsewhere.

2 more annotations...

• The Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez is one of the deadliest in the world. Controlled by two waring drug gangs and a corrupt police, the town witnesses over 3,000 murders a year.
  
• Investments designed to counter the poverty and disenchantment that supply cartels with foot soldiers are injected throughout the city: parks and new high schools in some of the poorest neighborhoods, new hospitals and clinics and more police patrols in commercial districts to stop the extortion that has devastated Juarez's local economy.
• For every high school built under Todos Somos Juarez, the city is short another.

1 more annotation...

• N'dele, 21 February 2011 (IRIN) - With literacy and school-enrolment rates among the lowest in the world, the continuing fighting between local rebel groups is putting even more pressure on CAR’s fragile education system. 
   
   

  Years of displacement have caused the collapse of school attendance. Destroyed or looted facilities are still being rebuilt and the recruitment of teachers in areas affected by violence in the North is extremely difficult, leaving humanitarian aid organizations battling to providing basic education.
• “I decided to stay in the village anyway. I was trying to keep regular lessons with the children in school though the situation was so fragile a lot of people had left. Many of them never came back.
• “Since I left I haven’t been under contract with the government any more. However, I decided to carry on with teaching in rural areas, even though I am not paid for it. Teaching is my passion but now to earn some money I have to cultivate people’s land.”
  

1 more annotation...

• 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.
• In particular, relatively minor shocks to educational access – even as small as one less year of schooling – can have long-lasting detrimental effects on the children that are out of school, as well as on the human capital of whole generations.
• But human capital – the stock of skills and knowledge we gain through education and experience – is the backbone of successful economic and social recovery. Ignoring these long-term consequences will endanger any attempts to rebuild peace, social justice and stability.

3 more annotations...

• The political upheaval in Côte d’Ivoire is taking a heavy toll on education, especially in the north, illustrating starkly the devastating impact conflict can have on learning opportunities – and the vicious circle in which conflict and education can become trapped.
• A teacher described his school in Abidjan, the commercial capital, as much better than others in the city: “There are around 63 students per teacher – that’s a small class; it’s considered good. But there are no tables, no chairs, sometimes there’s no light. Sometimes students take it in turns to come into the classroom to sit on the few chairs.”
• This year’s Global Monitoring Report focuses on other ways in which education failures can stoke conflict – such as perpetuating prejudice instead of promoting tolerance, and failing to pass on the skills that children need to escape poverty. The report lays out practical steps that governments and the international community can take to make sure that education builds peace rather than fanning the flames of war.

1 more annotation...

• Education has long been held up as a shining example of reconstruction in Afghanistan. Donors have ploughed approximately $1.9bn into rebuilding the Afghan education system since 2001. The Back to School campaign, launched in 2002 as a joint Afghan government/UN Initiative, was labelled an "inspiration" and the flagship of reconstruction and development efforts in Afghanistan.
• The achievements of the Back to School campaign were undeniably impressive. In just the past two years, 2,281 schools have been built across the country. Around 5,000 Afghan girls were enrolled in school in 2001. Now there are 2.4 million, a staggering 480-fold increase.
• Now, according to the report, Afghanistan's education system is sliding backwards and becoming crippled by poverty, increasing insecurity and a lack of investment in infrastructure and trained staff.
• The report's research claims that far fewer of the 2.4 million girls enrolled in school are actually in the classroom. In 2009 approximately 22% – around 446,682 – of female students were considered long-term absentees.
• While 2,281 schools have been built in the past two years, data from the Afghan Ministry of Education shows that 47% still have no actual building. A lack of investment in female teachers is proving a significant obstacle to girls attending school.
• In the past years schools and girl students have been targeted by anti-government forces or other extremist groups, prompting teachers to leave their jobs and parents to keep their children out the classroom. In 2009 there were 50 attacks on schools across Afghanistan every month.

4 more annotations...

• TUNIS, Tunisia, 23 February 2011 - After his school was attacked three times in two weeks, *Issam, 13, admits he’s afraid.

   

  Popular protests in Tunisia started mid-December in the interior regions of the country and led, a month later, to the toppling of the then President, causing schools to close down for two weeks.
• Since interim authorities have taken over, schools have begun to reopen. Now, after a few days of strikes, schooling is slowly returning to normal. Insecurity, however, remains a concern. Across the country, schools have reported incidents of theft, looting, burning and armed attacks.
• Most of the demonstrators are believed to be outlaws whose sole purpose is to destabilize the country. On one occasion, according to Imene, they came with knives, sticks and shards of glass. They even locked the teachers in one room and left with the key.
• The exact number of schools that have been targeted during the recent unrest is unknown. UNICEF, however, estimates that basic schools have been looted, damaged or stolen in seven of out 23 regions, with serious degradations in Sidi Bouzid, the heart of the revolution, where six primary schools have been looted and partially burnt
• Beyond the damage to buildings, these events have also left an impact on schoolchildren throughout the country, many of whom have been direct witnesses of scenes of violence. To make sure their children are safe, some parents have decided to keep watch inside the school.
• UNICEF will be supporting the Ministry of Education in rehabilitating damaged schools, providing psychosocial support to affected children, and promoting opportunities for dialogue and the restoration of mutual trust and respect between students and teachers.

• In the meantime, Imene is worried. “I want things to go back to normal,” she says. “I have an important exam this year, and I want to pass it.”

   

  Both she and her brother are looking forward to the day when things calm down and they resume their daily activities.

5 more annotations...

• Since the Second World War, while the number of conflicts between countries has declined, the number of civil wars has steadily increased – bringing more and more civilians into the firing line, and exposing schools, schoolchildren and teachers to deadly violence.
• An increasing number of children are being killed and injured in the Afghan conflict,
• Education is often deliberately targeted in such violence, according to evidence outlined last month by Human Rights Watch in Schools as Battlegrounds, an essay in the organisation’s World Report 2011.  “Intentional targeting of education is a far-reaching if underreported phenomenon,” Zama Coursen-Neff and Bede Sheppard write in the essay.

1 more annotation...

• Decades of political violence in northern Central African Republic have caused widespread destruction and displacement. The educational sector has been badly affected by a dire shortage of teachers and adequate physical infrastructure. For thousands of children, classes take place not in solid buildings of brick, but in rudimentary “bush schools”.

• “Needs are huge and funds insufficient. More appropriate infrastructure as well as qualified teachers are needed. Because of difficulties in the conflict-affected areas of the North, disparities in terms of access and quality are deepening,” Farid Boubekeur, chief education officer with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in CAR, told IRIN.
• For about 200 pupils of the primary school Ecole Ouande, in the Linguiri Village of the M'Brès Sub-Prefecture in the northeast of the country, lessons are conducted under a big tree with five pupils sharing each wooden desk.

• Many of the pupils attending schools in the area were forced to flee their homes due to the conflict between rebel groups and government forces, and are now living in informal settlements in and around the village.
• “Finding teachers who would want to work in this area is very difficult. But pupils’ parents are very supportive and voluntarily contribute with 100 CFA each [50 cents] to support the trainee teacher,” said one of the teachers.

3 more annotations...

• DAKAR (AlertNet) - Some 800,000 children in Ivory Coast have missed out on school since the outbreak of violence following last year's disputed presidential election.

   

  In the western regions of Moyen Cavally and 18 Montagnes, where fresh fighting erupted on Tuesday, some 180,000 children are losing out on their education and most teachers have been absent since November.

   

  "We know from experience that when children’s education is disrupted in a situation like this, they are less likely to go back to school once the crisis is over," said Guy Cave, Ivory Coast country director for Save the Children.
• Nearly 45,000 of those who have fled their homes have sought safety in Liberia. But aid groups say the thousands of children who have crossed into Liberia cannot attend school there because of language and curriculum differences.   
• Simmering political tensions among secondary and college students supporting different sides in the deadlock have led to fights. About 4,000 students have seen their books, schoolbags and other study materials destroyed by fellow students.
• Teachers in some areas have been encouraged not to attend their classes in protest at the post-electoral crisis. Others have abandoned their posts out of fear for their safety, the agency said.

2 more annotations...

• 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.
• The report contains detailed information on violations against children in Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal, Occupied Palestinian Territories/Israel, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Southern border provinces of Thailand, Uganda and Yemen.

2 more annotations...

• 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.
• In Orakzai alone, militants blew up nearly 80 educational  institutions, including several schools from primary to high school for boys and girls, and one Degree  College for men. Last February, militants destroyed the lone Girls’ Degree College, whose 235 students  continue holding classes atop the debris.
• The move will put some 4,500 students back on track with their schooling, and employ 192 teachers as  well.
• "The students study under the shade of trees, while they use the tents to store their bags. This is  because there is no electricity inside the tents while outside the students enjoy a good atmosphere,"  said teacher Shahidullah Khan. At the moment, the students use mats in lieu of school desks, which will  be provided in the future, he added.  
  
• Khan said the FATA has 5,478 schools and colleges, hundreds of which have been damaged, depriving  some 255,000 students of education. The government was forced to shut down another 18 due to  violence, leaving more than 300 teachers jobless.
• In Mohmand Agency, the militants flattened 108 schools affecting almost 90,000 students. The  authorities said they have reopened 44 boys’ and 12 girls’ schools in tents, while the rest are being  reconstructed.
• These government-run schools are the only source of modern education for students in the FATA. They  offer classes from the first to the 10th grade, but students have to source their own books and other  school materials.    Gibran Khan is another beneficiary of the tent school that was established on May 30. "I was sad when  our school was destroyed in January this year but now I am happy," said Khan, a 12-year-old fifth  grade student.
• Statistics for female literacy in the FATA are also disturbing. Neighbouring KP province has a female  literacy rate of 30 percent, but the rate is FATA is a mere three percent. The national literacy rate for  females is 54 percent.
• "We have launched a programme in which we are going to reconstruct damaged schools. The  government of Japan is assisting in rebuilding 80 schools in FATA," said Ghafoor Khan, education  officer of the FATA Secretariat.

9 more annotations...