© UNICEF/NYHQ2011-2121/Dormino
Children participate in the creation of a one-minute video in Kenscoff, a community near Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, 30 January, 2012 – With 43 per cent of its people under 18 years old, Haiti has one of the youngest populations in the world. Yet the country’s young people continue to suffer from a lack of opportunities and remain vulnerable in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

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Before the quake, 55 per cent of children were missing out on their right to an education. Despite post-disaster efforts to return children to the classroom, many remain out of school. Additionally, issues related to child development receive little attention, especially outside urban areas.

To highlight the challenges faced by youth, UNICEF and partners PANOS Caribbean and Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables are providing media training to vulnerable children. In these trainings, young people learn how to use radio and video equipment, write reports and take pictures to bring attention to the needs and challenges facing their peers.

UNICEF moderator Femi Oke discussed this innovative program with three of its organizers: Margarette Altidor, President of Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables; Jean-Jacques Simon, UNICEF Haiti Chief of Communication; and Jan Voordouw, Programme Coordinator of PANOS Caribbean.

Youth participation

According to Mr. Simon, the project has successfully helped children address their concerns about education, health sanitation and other aspects of day-to-day life.

“We have created unique productions where you can understand what the children of Haiti are going through,” said Mr. Simon. “The scars are not completely healed, and one of the goals here is to prepare youth for the future. Building the future of this country is one big challenge, but it’s a challenge that youth must be part of.”

Discussing opportunities for young people, Mrs. Altidor called on Haitian institutions to play a bigger role in training and educating young people. “It’s not only a job for the international organizations, but Haitian organizations, too. Young people in Haiti should try to do their best,” said Mrs. Altidor.

Tools for survival

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the largest to strike the Caribbean in the last two centuries. More than 220,000 people were killed in the disaster, and over a million remained displaced one year later. During catastrophes like this, and in the recovery phase that follows, communication is a crucial survival tool.

“It is when the population needs the information the most,” said Mr. Voordouw, pointing out that the media skills children learned during their training were not only marketable talents for the participants, but a benefit to the community as well.

“In the Haitian culture, children can be seen but cannot be heard, so when it happens, [it] can be very useful,” he continued.

And the children’s stories are having an effect.

“The problems get solved,” Mr. Voordouw said. “We have had some indications that domestic violence went down after the children spoke about it.”

© UNICEF/NYHQ2011-1770/Pirozzi
A teacher assists Julian Goaheh, 6, in a UNICEF-supported school in Ganta Town, Liberia.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 28 December 2011 – In 2011, significant strides were made in improving the education of children around the world: More children are now enrolled in primary schools than ever before. Still, in spite of remarkable progress, civil unrest and natural disasters have slowed down improvements in affected areas.

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To wrap up the year, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh.

Sustainable progress

The past year has seen major educational achievements on several levels, Mr. Singh says. There has been sustainable progress in expanding education, greater recognition of the critical importance of education on the UN development agenda, serious country initiatives to advance secondary education, and stronger emphasis on technical and vocational training around the world.

Girls’ education has also improved significantly, even though girls still comprise more than half of all children out of school.

© Photo courtesy of Kishore Singh
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh says there is a need for more innovative and equitable education systems around the world.

“One of the biggest impediments [to gender equality in education] is the social misconception,” says Mr. Singh. “Girls in many developing countries are still viewed to be not equally entitled to education.”

Educating children in emergencies

In his latest report to the UN General Assembly, Mr. Singh estimates that around 28 million children of primary school age who live in conflict-affected countries are currently out of school. Around 875 million school children live in high seismic-risk zones and millions more face regular floods, landslide or other natural disasters.

Educating children in these areas is vital, not only to recovery but also to preventing humanitarian emergencies in the first place.

© UNICEF/INDA2011-00070/Graham Crouch
Caption: Pausha Madharia (16 years old) holding a youth newspaper that aims to give voice to the youth of rural India. Based on the Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, children have the right to speak freely and to articulate their concerns. This bi-monthly newspaper titled Children Independence and sponsored by UNICEF encourages children to ask who, what, when and why from senior members of the community.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 21 November, 2011 – This year marks the 22nd anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ratified by 193 states, the Convention has gained wide support worldwide and transformed the way children are treated around the globe. Yet, children’s right to education as a fundamental human right remains a challenge especially for those living in conflict areas.

UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with two experts, Professor Philip G. Alston and Professor David M. Smolin, about the achievements of the last 22 years as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

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The right to education

Professor Alston teaches law at New York University School of Law and co-chairs the law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. In 1989, he was part of the UNICEF delegation to the drafting sessions of the Convention and later served as adviser in promoting the ratification of the Convention by countries around the world.

Discussing the right to education, Professor Alston observed that despite the fact that children’s right to free primary education is guaranteed through the international law, in reality access to qualitative education is often dictated by the availability of resources.

“It has only been in the last 10-15 years that governments have come to acknowledge that charges to primary education constitute a fundamental obstacle to children getting educated in a great many situations,” he explained.

Professor David Smolin, a professor of law at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama, emphasized that the right to education is closely linked with one’s right to fully participate in one’s own culture. “Education equips people for their vocational future and to have a better possibility, a better job and a better earning capacity, he said. “To be illiterate, to lack primary education is to be stripped of the capacity to participate fully in your own culture.”

UNICEF/NYHQ2005-1985/Georgina Cranston
Girls smile in an outdoor classroom at the UNICEF-supported Gua Community Girls' School near the town of Nyal. Sudan was one of the first countries to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990.

Challenges ahead

The last two decades have yielded remarkable progress in the protection and advancement of children rights. Yet, many children still go without food, shelter or healthcare and face lives of poverty and abuse. According to UNESCO, approximately 67 million of them are missing out on education and the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Highlighting the challenges ahead, Professor Alston said: “I would like to see more resources devoted to children rights, more formal legislative recognition of treating children as right barriers, recognising their right to participation in decisions that affect them.”

Professor Smolin stressed that advancing children’s rights is part of the broader effort to make a better world for all human beings. “The truth is that you can’t really protect children and provide children with what they need without providing adults with what they need,” he said. “I don’t think we have yet fully worked out what it means to recognise a child as a human person with rights and yet recognise that they are in this certain stage of human development where you have to protect them from certain things and you have to provide certain things.”

© UNICEF/NYHQ2010-1762/Leonie Marinovitch
A girl attends Koulweogo Primary School in Zorgho Village in rural Ganzourgou Province in Plateau-Central Region. Burkina Faso was among the first 18 countries invited to join the Fast Track Initiative (now Global Partnership for Education) as early as June 2002.

By Rudina Vojvoda

The Global Partnership for Education has helped more than 19 million children go to school for the first time. A campaign to renew support for these efforts will culminate in a pledging event in Copenhagen on 7-8 November. This series of stories seeks to highlight the Partnership’s work in the lead-up to this event.

NEW YORK, 4 November, 2011 – Next week in Copenhagen, Denmark, representatives from governments, United Nations agencies, the private sector and civil society will gather to take part in a conference in support of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

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Since its creation in 2003, the GPE has helped 19 million children enrol in school. Seeking an education investment of US$2.5 billion over three years, the GPE is aiming to provide an additional 25 million children with the opportunity to attend school.

According to UNESCO, there are currently 67 million children around the world who are out of school and robbed of their right to an education. If all students in low-income countries could read, global poverty could be reduced by 12 per cent.

In the lead-up to the event, UNICEF discussed the challenges in financing the education sector in a podcast moderated by Femi Oke.

The importance of education

Charles Tapp, Senior Advisor for Fundraising at the GPE, commented on current funding trends, and stressed the need for a greater focus on education. “One of the things that has been concerning is that education has been somewhat falling off the international development agenda,” he said. “We have decided that we have to really crank up our efforts and try to galvanize great global attention to the importance of education.”

The Global Partnership for Education will hold a pledging event in Copenhagen on 7-8 November.

One of the first recipients of GPE funding is Burkina Faso, a West African nation of more than 15 million people. The country’s Minister of Education and Literacy, Ms. Koumba Boly Barry, expressed her enthusiasm to take part in the upcoming GPE and pointed out the increased rates of child literacy in her country since the partnership with GPE began. “This fund will help this country move forward,” she said.

Jennifer Maurer, Senior Policy Associate at RESULTS, a grassroots organization which fights global poverty, added to the discussion by highlighting education as the single most important intervention that can have a wide and long-lasting impact in people’s lives. “I don’t want to sound alarmist but we never think of the fact that people die because of lack of education,” she said.

Related Link:
A new government program aims to provide a free education for all Haiti’s children
The Global Partnership for Education

© 10x10/2011
Martha Adams, producer of the film '10x10', with nine-year-old Marie-Angeline at the Center for Actions and Development in Haiti

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 17 October 2011 – Representatives from United Nations agencies, governments, the private sector and civil society recently gathered at the Women & Girls Education Summit in New York, to explore linkages between girls’ education and economic development.

As a follow up to the event, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with Martha Adams, producer of ‘10×10’, a film encouraging investment in girls’ education, Patricia Velasquez, president of the Wayúu Tayá Foundation, which provides culturally sensitive assistance to indigenous Wayúu children, Lakshmi Puri, the Assistant Secretary-General for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and Ariana Tsapralis, an activist at Girl Up, a United Nations campaign that engages girls in girls’ and women’s empowerment.

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Starting from scratch

Martha Adams shared her experiences interviewing young girls suffering under the yoke of gender discrimination and debilitating poverty. “Countries like Haiti are almost starting from scratch,” she said. “The situation is dire.”

© Wayuu Taya Foundation
Patricia Velasquez, President of the Wayuu Taya Foundation.

Despite their many challenges, her young film subjects remain determined to rise above their seemingly insurmountable conditions, creating new opportunities for themselves and for all girls – a fact which serves as a major inspiration to Ms. Adams.

“There are countless examples where girls are changing the tide,” she said. “They are literally the very, very first girls to stop the cycle of poverty, to stop the cycle of discrimination.”

Stressing the importance of the collective effort being made between individuals and organisations to ensure a better educated generation of women, Ms. Velasquez spoke about opportunity. “I believe that we are a big family, and the family gets bigger and bigger,” she said of the organisations represented at the Summit. “We are giving, through the work of the organisation, an opportunity to somebody else to become a better person.”

Agents of change

© Oke-2011
Ariana Tsapralis, an activist for the United Nations Foundation campaign Girl Up, speaking at the 2011 Global Conference for Social Change and Women & Girls Education Summit.

Underscoring Ms. Adams’ observation that girls’ education can create a cascade of positive outcomes in the lives of women around the world, Ms. Pruri said: “Girls and women can be enabled to be agents of change, and we hope to be midwife to some of that.”

Through her work at Girl Up, Ms. Tsapralis encourages girls to become activists on behalf of disadvantaged girls around the world. She is motivated by the inequality she sees every day. “I can’t sit down and let these things happen around me,” she explained.

She hopes other girls will be similarly inspired. “This is something that anyone can do,” she said. “Any girl, from 10 years old, can join this organisation and be part of something that is changing the world.”

© UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0985/Noorani
A young girl studies at a new government primary school in Burshasoon Village in the central Bamyan Province. Students at the school previously attended classes in a tent.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 4 October 2011 – As school enrolment continues to climb throughout most of the developing world, the roles teachers play in our lives have become even more crucial. Tasked with providing a quality education to our current generation of students, teachers also have a significant hand in shaping the future by instilling in children essential cultural and social values such as tolerance, gender equality and open dialogue. Despite the heavy responsibility placed on their shoulders, in many parts of the world they are rewarded poorly and in some countries even subject to deadly attacks.

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This Wednesday will mark the annual celebration of World Teachers’ Day, and to commemorate the event, UNICEF’s podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with Jamila Marofi, a high school teacher from Afghanistan, Gorma Minnie, a school administrator from Liberia and Professor Fernando Reimers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in America.

Empowering teachers

According to Professor Reimers, many societies expect teachers to be the sole factor in providing a high quality education, but this expectation often leads to disappointment.

“I think one of the sources of this lack of appreciation is a misconception that high quality teaching is an individual solo act,” he explained, adding that more emphasis should be placed on the construction of systems that would empower every teacher to be excellent.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0986/Shehzad Noorani
Afghanistan, 2009 (Standing, left-right) a teacher helps a girl during a lesson in a new government primary school in Burshasoon Village in the central Bamyan Province. Students at the school previously attended classes in a tent. The new building is centrally located, which reduces the children’s travel time. Nearly all of the 34 students in the class, including the youngest, work in the fields to help support their families.

Professor Reimers went on to highlight the need to provide educators with the proper training before and during the school year as well as creating an environment conducive to effective teaching.

Lack of resources

Sharing her experience as an educator in Kabul, Afghanistan, Ms. Marofi pointed to a lack of resources as the main challenge to teachers in her country. “They [teachers] have no materials to use,” she said, “they just teach from the book and the chalk.”

Ms. Minnie was more hopeful, stressing that although teachers in Liberia are facing similar challenges, there has been some improvement. “As we are speaking, the government is taking the lead to increasing teachers’ salary and encourage them to be in the classroom,” she said.

Finally, Proffesor Reimers invited everyone to celebrate the World Teachers’ Day by publicly recognising their favourite teacher, stating: “Shed light into the people who are doing good work and make it your task to let other people know the work of teachers.”

Related link:
Joint Message from UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO and Education International on the occasion of World Teachers’ Day – 5 October 2011

© UNICEF/NYHQ2011-1152/Kate Holt
Six-year-old Nemanja Brkic (left) and a classmate hold up drawings in their nursery school in Novi Sad, capital of Vojvodina Province. Nemanja was born with hearing problems. His nursery school is one of the first to accept disabled children as part of a new law integrating disabled children into regular schools. Nemanja is the only child in his class with special needs, and, with therapy, he is able to keep up with his classmates.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 21 September 2011 – Over 1.5 million children in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CEE/CIS) live with disabilities. Commonly locked up in segregated institutions or hidden away in their homes, children with disabilities are one of the most marginalised groups of our society. They are often denied their basic right to quality education and lack opportunities to interact with their peers and participate actively in the society.

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To promote inclusive education for children with disabilities, 20 representatives from the CEE/CIS countries as well as relevant stakeholders are gathering in Moscow on 27-29 September for the first-ever regional conference of this dimension.

In the lead up to the Moscow conference, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke talked to Ms Elina Lehtomaki, Researcher at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and a pioneer in the field of inclusive education.

Equal rights to education for children with disabilities

Throughout the world children who have disabilities or experience difficulties in learning have traditionally been marginalized within or excluded from schools.

“We do assume that education is for all but it’s an assumption”, said Ms Lehtomaki. “Even in countries where we have got high enrolment rates of children going to school, we still find that children with disabilities are not even counted for. Children may stay at school or they may go to segregated education settings where they are out of the general education system.”

For Ms Lehtomaki, the education of children with disabilities is particularly important because of its potential to build children’s capacities and reduce social stigma. “Social stigma is one of the key issues preventing parents from taking children to school, especially the schools where other children go”, she said.

Working toward the same goal

The Moscow conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities in CEE/CIS will focus on three main objectives: highlighting the global movement toward inclusive education and exploring the region’s fit within the global trend; sharing best practices implemented so far in the region; enhancing collaboration among all stakeholders.

Commenting on the outcomes of the conference, Ms Lehtomaki said: “We need all efforts and we need everybody in this process, everybody to work towards the same goal”.

To learn more about Inclusive Education Conference, please visit:
The Conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities in CEECIS

Related link:

Governments urged to build on innovations, speed up inclusive education reforms for children with disabilities

© UNICEF/NYHQ2011-0999/Kate Holt
Somali children waiting to register for food and other aid in the Dagahaley refugee camp in North Eastern Province, near the Kenya-Somalia border. The camp is among three that comprise the Dadaab camps, located on the outskirts of the town of Dadaab in Garissa District. In Kenya, 1.7 million children have been affected by the drought, including 220,000 Somali refugee children in the north-eastern town of Dadaab.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 12 September 2011 – As the emergency escalates throughout the Horn of Africa, the numbers of those in crisis continue to grow. Currently, 13.3 million people in the region are in need of humanitarian assistance. Somalia is the worst-affected country, with more than 750,000 people at risk of death.

This dire situation poses some crucial challenges to the education services. Due to displacement and lack of security, more than 1.8 million children are unable to attend school in Somalia. Meanwhile, in drought-affected areas in Kenya, there are significant shortages of school facilities, teachers and learning materials due to a large number of refugees that are seeking education.

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To discuss the beginning of the school year under these extreme circumstances and the importance of education in emergency situations, UNICEF’s new podcast moderator Femi Oke talked to Mr. Jumma Khan, Education Cluster Coordinator for Somalia and Mr. Garisa Omara, a Senior Assistant Director of Education in the Kenyan Ministry of Education.

Education situation dire

Years of conflict, back-to-back droughts accompanied by food crisis, poverty and lack of funding have put the education of children in south and central Somalia in a desperate situation. Approximately 25 per cent of children were attending primary education before the crises and this number is expected to drop at the beginning of this school year.

“We are very worried about the education situation in that area [south and central Somalia] because there is no Ministry of Education there,” stressed Mr. Khan. Traditionally the education system in these areas is supported by Community Education Committees formed by local leaders, parents and teachers.

“Now the communities are unable to pay the fee,” Mr. Khan further explained. “Teachers have been displaced because they don’t have any livelihood there.”

Immediate assistance needed

Running from famine and violence, many children from Somalia are going to schools in Kenya.

“We need teaching and learning materials,” said Mr. Omara. “Putting up infrastructure such as classrooms and supporting mobile schools are essential because most of the people are on the move”.

Supporting this idea, a recent publication by the Education Cluster in Kenya calls for immediate support in order to establish temporary learning centers, and provide classroom space to accommodate new students in host communities. Furthermore, assistance is needed to ensure adequate water and sanitation facilities and provide essential teaching and learning materials for children and teachers.

© UNICEF/Geogia2010/Matthew Emry
Young researchers during a team exercise in Georgia.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 11 August 2011 – This week marks the end of the International Year of Youth, a year dedicated to celebrating young people’s achievements as well as creating more opportunities for youth to engage fully in the development of their societies. Although people under 24 represent nearly half of the world’s population, in many countries they often lack freedom, equal opportunities and quality education that is their basic right.

To commemorate International Youth Day on 12 August, podcast moderator Amy Costello discusses the importance of youth participation in research: with Valon Kurhasani, Jafar Usmanov and Matthew Emry. The three guests worked together on a UNICEF survey – taking place in Kosovo, Tajikistan, Georgia and Chechnya – that aims to investigate youth perspectives on education quality. During the study, young people participated in every step of the process, from designing questionnaires to performing interviews and analysing data.

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Peer to peer

Mr. Usmanov, who led the research team in Tajikistan, believes that engaging young people as researchers has proven more effective when it comes to assessing youth needs. “We saw that youth were more open and ready to share with their fellow youth than when adults interview them,” he said.

Drawing concrete examples from his experience, Mr. Usmanov explained that young researchers had been particularity successful in southern Tajikistan – a traditional area where girls are often excluded from public discussions.

“But they [girls] were telling their story, their feelings and what they thought about education to other young girls who were researchers,” said Mr. Usmanov.

Building capacities

Discussing the importance of having young people participate directly as researchers, Mr. Emry, who worked closely with the research teams in four countries, said that young people were able to get more direct, honest answers from their peers and in the process gaining valuable experience.

“They themselves were building the skills necessary to be able to do the same kind of work in the future, either as researchers, organizers or do advocacy work,” he said.

Expressing their concerns

As the Executive Director of the Kosovar Youth Council, Mr. Kurhasani is highly involved with the issues faced by the Kosovan youth. When asked about the validity of the data gathered by the young researchers in Kosovo, Mr. Kurhasani said that young people were honest in their responses and they understood correctly the purpose of the research. “Youth generally in Kosovo has many concerns and they didn’t hesitate to express those concerns and needs in different ways,” said Mr. Kurhasani.

© UNICEF/PAKA2010-00441/Marta Ramoneda
A girl at a UNICEF-supported school in a relief camp for people affected by the floods in Sukkur, Pakistan.

By Rudina Vojvoda

NEW YORK, USA, 27 July 2011 – The floods that hit Pakistan one year ago are considered to be the worst in its history. Triggered by the annual monsoon rains, the water floods claimed hundreds of lives, destroyed 2 million homes and washed away more than 2 million hectares of crops. Among the thousands of buildings lost in the floods, 10,000 were schools, heavily impacting the education of children in Pakistan.

At the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the monsoon floods, UNICEF podcast moderator Amy Costello talked to Ms Nafisa Shah, the co-chair of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) in Pakistan and Chairperson of the National Commission for Human Development and Ms Shahnaz Wazir Ali, co-chair of the Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF), a nationwide government initiative aiming to widen access to quality education in Pakistan. Both Members of the National Assembly and highly involved with the education sector in Pakistan, Ms Shah and Ms Wazir Ali discuss the current situation of education in Pakistan and the challenges of achieving quality education for all.

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Floods expose hidden issues

At present, Pakistan has 7 million children out of primary schools. According to Ms Shah, the floods, in a way, brought attention to some hidden issues in Pakistan’s education system.

“When we met the children in flood-affected areas, a number of them had never gone to school,” said Ms Shah. “The floods exposed what was lacking in terms of education”. According to Ms Shah, the floods uncovered the uneven access to state services for children living in poor communities. Ms Shah identified lack of school infrastructure, insufficient number of trained teachers and local traditions that engage children in farm labour as some of the barriers that are keeping children out of school.

Financing education and the Millennium Development Goals

The economic downturn caused by last year’s floods, combined with a traditionally underfunded education budget, seem to have significantly stalled Pakistan’s progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to Ms Wazir Ali.

“At the level at which Pakistan is spending, there is no way that it can meet the goals that [the country] has set for itself”, said Ms Wazir Ali. She stressed that the answer to improving the education system in Pakistan and getting closer to the MDGs rests with two main factors: ensuring a higher level of expenditures and improving management.

Quality education for girls

Girls constitute 60 per cent of children out of school in Pakistan. Asked about the current situation of girls’ education in Pakistan, Ms Shah said that the demand for girls’ education has increased since the floods. “I think that parents do not want to compromise on the quality now and we see that when good quality education is not available, parents are willing to sell their assets and so on for quality education and this includes the girls’ education as well”. Ms Nafisa Shah stressed that she is hopeful that much progress will be made in education in Pakistan.

The interviews in this podcast were recorded on 20 July 2011.

Related links:

UNICEF Pakistan