The Effect of Conflict on Access to Education

Education has been an integral factor contributing to the development of humankind since the outset. For ages, the drive to learn more about the surroundings and our curiosity has prodded us to seek education. Today, schooling has become an intrinsic part of a man’s life and education is being known as a basic right in numerous countries around the globe.

However, in many of the world’s poorest countries, armed conflict persists to wreck basic school infrastructure, hopes, and ambitions of children. While the number of primary aged children without access to education has markedly dropped in recent years (from 60 million in 2008 to 57 million in 2011), the benefits of this progress fail to reach these conflict-affected states, where more than half of the world’s primary-aged children out of school are estimated to live in.

In this report, I intend to analyze how conflict impacts access to education in countries around the world. For the convenience of this study, conflict can be divided into two wide topics: Internal conflicts and external conflicts. The definition of the word terrorism itself entails a sense of conflict, as one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This has given rise to multiple interpretations of the term.

However, it can be broadly defined as “the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a religious or political aim”.

In recent years, terrorism is becoming more widespread and it is affecting the rudimentary right to education. In many countries, schools have become “instruments of war” as the frequency of violent attacks on school children and staff have ramped up. According to a UN Human Rights Council report published in early 2015, more than 3,600 separate attacks against educational institutions, teachers, and students were recorded in 2012 alone. Schools in at least 70 different countries were attacked between 2009-14. Though it was published 4 years ago, the study was conducted over a duration of 5 years and therefore helps understand the general pattern and severity of attacks. Seeking and providing, an education has, for many children and their teachers, become a decision that may cost them their lives.

The massacre at Peshawar, Pakistan in 2014, for example, witnessed the burning alive and murder of 132 children and nine of their teachers. Access to good education is being compromised in conflict-stricken countries due to educational facilities, students, and teachers being targeted. In a GCPEA study titled ‘Education Under Attack 2018’, an alarming rise in the number of reported incidents in 2013 through 2017 was recorded. The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) is a unique inter-agency coalition formed in 2010 to address the problem of targeted attacks on education during armed conflict. The types of attack included the burning, and the bombing of schools and the murder, torture, abduction or rape of teachers & students, amongst others.

One of the reasons to target educational institutions in ‘conflict zones’ is to force acceptance of ‘incompatible ideologies.’ As humans, we practice the freedom to have our own opinions and express them. Occasionally, groups with similar convictions adopt extreme and violent methods to force their beliefs and prejudices on others. In many groups, members hold prejudice against the idea of education. In Afghanistan, for instance, the Taliban are a group of people who abide by their own customs and show glimpses of extremism in the way they view education. By imposing the Sharia law, they made sure that the education curriculum was strictly Islamic. The Taliban, therefore, went on to attacking education facilities by arson, hurling grenades, mines, and rockets on school premises; sending death threats to staff and teachers; and killing students. Another one of their ideological stands were against education for girls. The last link in the chain to intimidate the Afghan children, specifically girls, to stay out of the local schools was assaulting them on their way to school. During this time, terrorists who were part of the Taliban resorted to throwing acid on the faces of young girls, sparking fear amongst parents.

6,500 km across in Nigeria, from January to September 2013, some 30 teachers were reportedly shot dead, sometime during class. The Associated Press reported that in a video statement made in July 2013, Abubakar Shekau, leader of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, threatened teachers, saying: “School teachers who are teaching Western education? We will kill them! We will kill them!”; he also endorsed recent school attacks and claimed that non-Islamic schools should be burned down. Boko Haram, whose commonly used name means ‘Western education is a sin’ in Hausa, has imposed a strict form of Sharia, or Islamic law, in northern Nigeria and partially destroyed or burned down 50 schools in the first seven months of 2013, according to Amnesty International.

This situation brings to light another factor that can incite terrorism, which is to prevent schools from teaching a language, religion, culture or history alien to the particular identity group. This can lead to specific ‘groups of people’, to destroy school infrastructure and threaten the institution and their teaching staff. Take the instance of southernmost provinces in Thailand, where Islamic separatists, who have been fighting government forces since 2004, resent the imposition of the Thai language and Buddhist values in schools. “At lunchtime on December 11, 2012, five armed men arrived at the canteen, separated the only two Buddhist teachers - one of them the female director - from the other staff and executed them with gunshots to the head. “, reports an article by renowned broadcaster Aljazeera. Another article about a recent school attack also states, “Some 160 teachers have been killed and many schools set ablaze in continuing ethnic violence.”

Such incidents have a direct effect on the education condition in the region as most teachers are likely to migrate away from the conflict-stricken region for the sake of their safety. Due to this, local schools fail to provide education to the children, and there can be more detrimental and lasting effects for the future. In the long-term, there will likely be a shortage of teaching staff willing to be appointed in such a dangerous area. Access to education will face the risk of becoming obsolete and the right to education for the local children will continue to be exploited.

Lastly, schools are the most visible signs of government rule in most regions. Therefore, another cause can be to destroy symbols of government control or demonstrate control over an area by an anti-government group. As prominent symbols of government rule, local schools make the perfect target for anti-government terrorist groups.

Terrorist attacks bear huge consequences on the education accessibility of a region. The foremost reason is the fear factor. Post attacks, parents are hesitant to send their kids back to school, fearful that their children or the school might be the next target. Understandably, staff and teachers who have witnessed such terror and have seen their fellow colleagues and students being brutally murdered will be reluctant to return. Not only the psychological trauma but also the loss of staff though deaths or injury and loss of learning material & resources become impediments on the path to attain education.

As an immediate measure to resolve this problem, military force and counter-terrorism methods are to be used to wipe out the terrorists or extremist groups. Also, refusing to allow politicians to hold up rallies and refraining from setting up polling stations in or around schools can reduce the image of local schools as being a symbol of the state authority or government. A long-term solution is to raise awareness and educate the general public about equality, respect, and harmony. This, in turn, will reduce the likelihood of children turning into terrorists in the future.

While speaking to UN security council on October 13, 2017, Joy Bishara, a victim of 2014 Boko Haram attack, urged nations to protect education from internal conflicts, “Schools need to be protected. Students need to feel safe. They need to study and work towards their dreams without fear. This is the only way they will be able to go out and make a change in the world. I hope and pray that no more students will go through what I went through.”

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Whenever a nation faces an armed conflict, it leads to general unrest across the region. The priority at that point is to defend the borders of the nation and mobilize all possible resources to safeguard the integrity of the country. Under these exceptional circumstances of armed conflict, the focus on education takes a backseat.

In the case of prolonged conflict, school campuses are often evacuated to hoard weaponry or to house armed forces or displaced citizens. In the conflict in Syria, for example, all armed groups involved in the conflict used schools as military headquarters, detention and interrogation centres, military training centres, barracks, and sniper posts. Since the war began, more than 4,000 schools across Syria have been destroyed, damaged or turned into shelters for displaced people.

This induces denied access to education as children are no longer to pursue studies at education institutes. Military use of schools also turns schools into a military object- a more vulnerable target for attack. This not only increases the probability of bombing strikes and deaths of students & staff present at site but also poses a threat to young girls. Evidence shows that the military use of schools increases both the actual and perceived risk of rape and sexual violence by armed actors operating inside or around schools.

Another reason for the decline in access to education for children is the scarcity of resources. An outbreak of war hugely impacts the local economy, agriculture, jobs, and infrastructure. Parents in poor countries, where conflict is most prevalent, struggle to provide their families with basic necessities like food and shelter. In such a scenario, accommodating the expenses of sending their child to school is out of the question.

Moreover, displacement is one of the primary consequences of the nature of contemporary conflict. Displacement can be brought about by two factors: 1. Fleeing due to arrival or anticipation of conflict; 2. Fleeing due to social and economic distraught evoked by conflict.

Over 50% of all refugees displaced during war comprise of people aged below 18. This accentuates the fact that children of educational age are at the highest risk during war. According to an UNHCR report title “Left Behind: Refugee Education in crisis”, only 61% of refugee children are at primary school - compared to 91% of all children across the world. Just 23% of adolescent refugees attend secondary school, compared to 84% globally. Education data on refugee enrolments and population numbers is drawn from UNHCR’s population database, reporting tools and education surveys and refers to 2016. The report also references global enrolment data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics referring to 2015.

Given that refugees spend, on average, 20 years in forced displacement, this is not just a temporary break in children’s schooling. Being out of school’ as a refugee often means missing out on education entirely.

Pauline Rose, director of the global monitoring report, said: ' There are more refugees now than there have been since 1994; children make up half of those who have been forcibly displaced. Nowhere is this more painfully visible than in Syria. These girls and boys face disruption of their learning process at a critical time – and the risk of a lifetime of disadvantage as a result.'

Displacement precedes numerous consequences that result in the direction of education. One of them is the loss of possessions. While traversing, loss of documentation (e.g. birth certificates, school-leaving certificates) can hinder enrolling into schools, in some cases for years until the war calms. Additionally, Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps and other gathered settlements may have only makeshift schools without enough teachers. The teachers that were available, however, were barely trained and as the war progresses young male teachers are conscripted into the armed forces. This leads to a shortage of teachers.

To combat this exploitation of the right to education, as an immediate solution, requirements for IDPs to have all documentation for enrolment should be relaxed and fees should be waived. Also, children should be taught certain skills to protect themselves (e.g. during an air strike, or self-defence). On the government’s behalf, schools shouldn’t be occupied for military operations and required laws and policies should be in place. The double-shift system can be introduced as well. This involves local children using the classrooms in the morning while the evacuees would attend school in the afternoon.

Looking at both the issues, it is evident that despite ongoing efforts, the right to education is exploited in most conflict-stricken regions where access to education has become scarce. However, an interesting inference can be made to find a substantial and withstanding solution to this concern - ‘Though education remains a low priority in situations of conflict education itself could be an important stimulant to end conflict.’

As Malala Yousafzai famously quoted, “with guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism. “By replying to injustice and violence with armed forces, a country can hope to control its enemy and prevent further attacks on schools, but by educating its future generation, it can seize the problem from its root.

Thus, education can play a constructive role – whether it be by providing protection in response to crisis and conflict, tackling inequalities in access or bias in education provision, or by contributing to transformation and change as part of peacebuilding processes.

As a student who goes to school every day, ensured my safety, it is easy to take for granted how privileged I am to be able to pursue my education. During the course of conducting research and writing this report, I realized that education is a basic right for all people, regardless of their age, nationality or situation. However, many children of my age have little to no access to education due to the hapless and perilous scenario of conflict.

This analysis has played an integral part in shaping my perspective on the importance of education. It has made me believe that with the education I achieve, I have the power to help others achieve the same and fight against the oppression and injustice they face at such a tender age. It has made me believe, that education is the path to make the world a place where everyone can live in harmony, security, and have the freedom to express opinions without fear of being targeted.