Conflict Makes Millions Miss School

[tyler arnot]

Reprinted from Al-Jazeera
Friday March 4, 2011


Armed conflict is robbing 28 million children of an education, by
keeping them out of school where they are often targets of sexual
abuse and violence, according to a report released by UNESCO.

Released on Tuesday, the Education for All Global Monitoring Report
warned that of the world's primary school aged children not attending
schools, 42 per cent of these live in poor countries that are wracked
by conflict.

"Armed conflict remains a major roadblock to human development in many
parts of the world, yet its impact on education is widely neglected,"
Irina Bokova, UNESCO director general, said in a statement released at
the report's launch in Dakar.

This often leads to a vicious cycle where 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.

Thirty-five countries were affected by armed conflict from 1999 to
2008, of which 15 are in sub-Saharan Africa.

'Legitimate targets'

"Children and schools are on the front line of these conflicts with
classrooms, teachers and pupils seen as legitimate targets," UNESCO's
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.

Children are also being used as soldiers in 24 countries including the
Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Myanmar and Sudan, the
report said.

UNESCO cited evidence in reports from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary
general, that rape and sexual violence are widely used as a weapon of
war in many countries.

"Many victims are young girls,'' the report said, citing Congo, where
one-third of rapes involve children and 13 per cent are carried out
against children under the age of 10.

According to the report, insecurity and fear associated with sexual
violence keeps young girls in particular out of school.

Increased military budgets

UNESCO warned that armed conflict is also diverting public funds from
education into military spending.

Currently, 21 developing countries budget more for military spending
than primary education, and pressure has grown on national budgets in
the wake of the financial crisis.

Education represents only two per cent of humanitarian aid, the report
says, estimating that it would take just six days of military spending
by aid donors to close the $16bn external financing gap in achieving
education for all.

While the report notes some progress in education in a few of the
world's poorest countries, UNESCO said the world was "falling too
slowly" to meet the goal of Education for All by 2015, that over 160
countries signed up to in 2000.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 10 million children drop out of primary
school every year and about 38 per cent of the region's adults (167
million people) still lack basic literacy skills - most of them women.

South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is one of four Nobel
laureates that endorsed the report, introduced it, saying: "It
documents in stark detail the sheer brutality of the violence against
some of the world’s most vulnerable people, including its
schoolchildren, and it challenges world leaders of all countries, rich
and poor, to act decisively."