As the
curtain comes down on yet another year, I sit back and reminisce about the
passage of time like many of my fellow earth dwellers. The year has been
extraordinary in many ways. However, nothing compares to the dramatic highs and
lows that the human civilization has reached in rapid succession.
In
November, a group of determined scientists and engineers pulled off the
impossible. They landed a small spacecraft on a comet hurtling through the
space between Mars and Jupiter at 34,000 mph, effectively hitting a bull's eye
from 310 million miles afar! A month later, another band of desperadoes found
their mark at a point-blank range among the children of Army Public School in
Peshawar, Pakistan.
I try to
draw up a list of "most significant" events from the topics that garnered wide attention
(i.e., trended for a while) on social
media. Among these are two sharing a common theme: #BringBackOurGirls (the
popular Twitter handle) and the Peshawar massacre.
Both incidents
took place on school grounds when large groups of students were busy with
exams. The perpetrators exploited the intimate relationship between educational
institutions and children to further their agendas. In each case, these
"motivated" adults have provided similar justifications for their
actions.
On
November 20, 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (CRC), which, among other things, calls on every country to enact
legislation that will reduce both social and financial barriers to staying in
school. Today, the CRC is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in
history, with 194 signatories (the United States, Somalia, and South Sudan are
the lone holdouts).
In the 25
years after committing to protect every child's right to education, an
overwhelming majority of these 194 governments have followed through on their
promise at the primary school level. In 90 percent of the countries that have
ratified the CRC, primary education is both free and compulsory. Even those
nations who do not adhere to the guidelines of "human rights" have taken
measures to guarantee the fundamental right of children.
However, to
these desecrators of sanctity of educational institutions, a child’s right is a
far-fetched thought. Their actions are nothing but attacks on children's right to education. The United Nations
defines an attack as any intentional threat or use of force directed against
students, teachers, education personnel and/or education institutions, carried out
for political, religious or criminal reasons.
Educational
institutions are particularly vulnerable to attacks because of their curriculum
content, or because they are seen to support new or old government structures
or political ideologies. In other situations, education is attacked as a means
of stopping educational, social and economic progress for particular groups of
children, particularly girls, or to cause widespread destruction in communities
that are not supportive of an armed group.
A 2013 report
by the UK-based organization Save the Children estimated that nearly 50 million
children and young people in conflict zones face the unnerving barriers to
education every day, keeping them out of school and preventing them from
reaching their true potential. As such, fewer children worldwide are now feted
with their fundamental right than in the previous years due to war and other
acts of violence.
A study published in 2014 by the
Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), which includes the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Save the Children among
others, finds that during 2009-2012 armed non-state groups, state military and
security forces, and armed criminal groups have attacked thousands of
schoolchildren, university students, teachers, academics and education
establishments in at least 70 countries worldwide.
It
concludes that targeted attacks on education and incidents of military use of
schools and universities are occurring in far more countries and far more
extensively than previously documented. It is not known whether this reflects
growing awareness of the problem and more and better reporting of such attacks
since the earlier studies were published or an actual increase in the number of
attacks.
The
Nigerian militant Islamic group Boko Haram (means ‘Western education is a sin’
in local Hausa language) has been waging a war against the Government seeking
to impose a strict form of Sharia, or Islamic law, in northern Nigeria. The
group’s leadership has endorsed school attacks and purportedly threatened to
burn down non-Islamic schools and to kill the teachers.
On April
14, Boko Haram militants abducted 276 mostly-Christian girls from the
Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria.
Houses in Chibok were also burned down in the incident. The school had been
closed for four weeks prior to the attack due to the deteriorating security
situation, but students from multiple schools had been called in to take final
exams in physics.
Parents
and others took to social media to complain about the government's perceived
slow and inadequate response. The news caused international outrage against
Boko Haram and the Nigerian government. The hash tag #BringBackOurGirls began
to trend globally on Twitter as the story continued to spread. Except for the
53 girls who had managed to escape, the abductees still remain unaccounted for.
Boko Haram subsequently claimed that the students were converted to Islam and
married off to members of the group, with a reputed "bride price" of
₦2,000 each ($12.50/£7.50).
According
to the GCPEA study, there were 838 or more reported attacks on schools in
Pakistan during 2009-2012, more than in any other country, leaving hundreds of
schools destroyed. Militants allegedly belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP or Pakistani Taliban) recruited children from schools and madrassas, some
to be suicide bombers. They also carried out targeted killings of teachers and
academics.
The face
of TTP’s assault on education is the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala
Yousafzi, who was shot on October 9, 2012, along with two other students on
their school bus. Apparently, the then 15-year-old was singled out for
promoting values that were secular and anti-Taliban. Malala had written an
anonymous blog for the BBC about life as a schoolgirl under the Taliban. The
Peshawar school massacre of December 16 was allegedly carried by TTP too. The
attack, which claimed the lives of 141 people, mostly children, was the worst
terrorist atrocity Pakistan has suffered. As in previous attacks, the Army
school was identified as a symbol of government authority. Accused of
“promoting western decadence and un-Islamic teachings,” schools have proved a
soft target for TTP in their northwestern strongholds. When TTP briefly took
control of Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2012, they “banned
girls’ schooling outright, forcing 900 schools to close or stop enrolment for
female pupils.” While the rule was later relaxed to allow girls to attend
school up to age 10, in Swat district alone, about 120,000 girls and 8,000
women teachers stopped going to school.
The TTP
campaign against education has been “alarmingly efficient,” the GCPEA report
concludes: hundreds of thousands of children have been bombed or terrorized out
of school, while violence against teachers has had a devastating effect on
recruitment. According to the International Crisis Group, more than nine
million Pakistani children are not currently receiving a primary or secondary
education. The country’s own Human Rights Commission concedes it has the
second-largest proportion of children not attending school in the world after
Nigeria.
Although the
Chibok and Peshawar incidents were marquee-grabbing news in 2014, they are
hardly the only ones. In early December, the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) declared 2014 as being “devastating” for some 15 million children
caught up in violent conflicts around the world. Most of these children are
from the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and in the
Occupied Palestinian territories – including those displaced in their own
countries or living as refugees outside their homeland, according to UNICEF.
And an estimated 230 million children live in countries and areas affected by
armed conflicts, it said.
In 2014,
UNICEF said children have been kidnapped from their schools or on their way to
school, recruited or used by armed forces and groups:
·
In the Central African
Republic, 2.3 million children are affected by the conflict, up to 10,000
children are believed to have been recruited by armed groups, and more than 430
children have been killed and maimed – three times as many as in 2013;
·
In Gaza, 54,000 children
were left homeless as a result of the 50-day conflict during the summer that
also saw 538 children killed, and more than 3,370 injured;
·
In Syria, with more than
7.3 million children affected by the conflict including 1.7 million child
refugees, the United Nations verified at least 35 attacks on schools in the
first nine months of the year, which killed 105 children and injured nearly 300
others;
·
In Iraq, where an
estimated 2.7 million children are affected by conflict, at least 700 children
are believed to have been maimed, killed or even executed this year;
·
And in South Sudan, an
estimated 235,000 children under five are suffering from severe acute
malnutrition. Almost 750,000 children have been displaced and more than 320,000
are living as refugees.
The
children’s agency went on to say that 2014 has also posed significant new
threats to children’s health and well-being, most notably the Ebola outbreak in
West Africa, which has left thousands of children orphaned and an estimated 5
million out of school.
The armed
conflicts around the world are having a devastating impact on the lives of
children from those regions. Youngsters are dying in growing numbers and
childhood itself is being destroyed. At the height of Israel's Gaza offensive
in July, the United Nations noted with alarm that a child was dying every hour.
In a punishing war now in its fourth year, even the youngest of Syrians are in
the snipers' sights. Instead of learning to read and write, children are
learning about all types of weapons. Most know the names of bullets, tracers
and rubber bullets; many spend days on empty stomach. Such is the new and
troubling "normal" for children living in war zones.
In the
words of a nine year-old refugee in a camp in southern Turkey, a world steeped
in the Free Syrian Army, "I'm only a child in age and appearance, but in
terms of morals and humanity, I'm not. In the past, a 12-year-old was
considered young, but not now. Now, at 12 years, you must go for jihad."
He has a teenage brother who's already joined the fight across the border.
The
physical damage of attacks against schools is quantifiable – destruction of
educational infrastructure represents a financial cost for a government. But it
is the human cost that is greatest.
A single
attack on a school can keep hundreds of children out of the classroom,
potentially destroying a community’s only place of learning and a principal
hub. In the worst scenarios, a combination of attacks on education and wider
conflicts can potentially deprive an entire generation of children of a good-quality
education. Moreover, attacks on teachers deprive children and schools of
teachers – essential actors in children’s learning, and role models.
Girls and
female teachers can be at higher risk of sexual violence, including rape,
committed by armed actors. In several conflict-affected countries, this risk
has proved a deterrent to female participation in education, both by teachers
and pupils. Furthermore, girls and female teachers subjected to sexual
violence, including those who become pregnant as a result of rape, are often
prevented from attending school because of stigma.
In Syrian
refugee camps of Jordan, there is an alarming rise in the number of girls being
forced into early marriages, according to the United Nations. Almost one third
(32%) of registered marriages involve a girl under 18, while the same group
constituted only 13% of marriages in pre-war Syria. Although some families
marry off their daughters because of tradition, but the UN says most are driven
by poverty.
Organized
trade in young girls, driven by clientele from the Gulf States, is sprouting up
outside the refugee camps. They prey on refugee families, living in rented
accommodation, who are struggling to get by. Local sources say the going rate
for a bride is between 2,000 and 10,000 Jordanian dinars ($2,800/£1,635 to
$14,000/£8,180) with another 1,000 ($1,400/£818) going to the broker. The 14-
and 15-year old girls appear to be in highest demand, though 12- and 13-year
old are also being sought. Most clients are 30-50 year male.
Many of these girls are being abandoned as soon as they become pregnant.
According
to psychiatrists, children exposed to traumatic events like war, often have
distorted views of incidents. For example, they might blame themselves or their
neighbors and the consequences are very detrimental to their mental health.
Every child of age six years and above living in Gaza has experienced at least
three wars.
In 2000,
as part of the Millennium Development Goals, the world set itself the ambitious
target of ensuring that every primary-age child in the world would be in school
by 2015. Well, the world is on the doorstep of that chosen date. In spite of
the significant progress made in the new millennium, it appears that the
international community will fall short of this goal. In 2011, 57 million
primary-age children worldwide were reported to be out of school.
With
pencil in the cross hairs, the millennium goal now appears far-fetched.
SUBHODEV DAS
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