© Anders Thormann/2011
Anthony Lake speaks at GPE Pledging Conference in Copenhagen.

By Joan Howe

Copenhagen, 9 November 2011 – Leading donors at the first-ever Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Pledging Conference promised an initial US$1.5 billion over the next three years to put millions more children in school.

The multi-partner global partnership met on 7-8 November in Copenhagen, Denmark, where donors also pledged to increase bilateral funding to support education investment and achieve concrete results in access and quality of education. The pooled education fund aims to secure predictable funding to put 25 million more children in school over the next three years. Developing countries pledged to increase domestic funding for education by more than US$2 billion.

“Millions of children depend on your pledges today. And we know who most of them are,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake told ministers from donor and partner countries, high-level officials, heads of UN agencies, CEOs, and leaders from Civil Society Organisations (CSO), teachers’ unions and development bankers. “They are the poorest children living in the most isolated places, suffering from exclusion and discrimination, often struggling to grow in the midst of conflict or humanitarian catastrophe.”

Mr. Lake gave examples of how education has helped to restore a sense of normalcy for children growing up in countries like Haiti, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, proving that progress is possible even in the most difficult situations. He highlighted Afghanistan, which has made significant strides in education in recent years, increasing the number of children in primary school from 1 million ten years ago to nearly 5 million today, with a total of approximately 7.3 million children enrolled in all grades.

The Executive Director also emphasized that in Afghanistan today, more than 4 million children are still out of school, the majority of whom are girls. “Afghanistan’s future depends on investing in the potential of all its citizens,” said Mr. Lake. “Indeed, no country has ever become strong and remained so, without such investments.”

UNICEF has been working in partnership with the Government of Afghanistan to achieve national education objectives. Afghanistan’s Minister of Education, Mr. Farooq Wardak, described the government’s efforts to put communities at the heart of a strategy to open schools and keep them open by protecting students and teachers. In provinces with the lowest enrolment, there is a special emphasis on girls going to school.

Mr. Peter Crowley, UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, emphasized that education is essential to achieving peace and stability. Recognizing the long journey that the country has already made since the Taliban banned girls from school, Crowley observed that “Afghanistan has begun to achieve real momentum in education; by continuing to support these gains, they can become self-sustaining.”

© 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 Afghanistan/2010

By Taleen Vartan

NEW YORK, 10 August 2011 – Continuing into its fifth year, the Back on Track Programme on Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) – a partnership between the Government of the Netherlands, the European Commission and UNICEF – supports countries in emergency and post-crisis transition contexts to establish sustainable progress towards quality basic education for all.

The second of the four goals of the Back on Track programme is to increase the resilience of education service delivery in chronic crises, arrested development and deteriorating contexts. It seeks to reverse the prevailing tendency to suspend support for education and other social services in conflict- or crisis-affected countries, while using education to help improve socio-political and economic situations.

Community-based schools

Quality education is a vital step for development in Afghanistan. Despite significant progress in school enrolment in the recent years, 4.5 million children – of which most are girls – remain out of school, according to the Ministry of Education. Girls have limited access to education due to restricted movement, cultural barriers, shortage of female teachers and poor school facilities. Furthermore, schools are often located far from children’s homes and the walk to school can be unsafe. To address Goal 2 of the programme, UNICEF, together with the Afghan Ministry of Education, is working with communities to establish community-based schools in conflict-affected areas, especially in Southern, Eastern and Central Regions.

Given the volatility of security in Afghanistan, the establishment of community-based schools provides flexibility as well as increased resilience and access to education in conflict-prone and hard-to-reach areas. The initiative is based on community participation in identifying out-of-school children and training educated men and women among the local community as teachers, and in designating community buildings such as mosques and public halls as learning spaces. This approach enables the most disadvantaged children, especially girls, to enrol in school at the right age.

In 2009, UNICEF and partners established and operated 268 community-based schools in conflict-prone areas in Central Region, providing more secure access to education for nearly 10,000 first-grade students, who would not have enrolled in school otherwise and would have been denied their fundamental right to an education. In addition, UNICEF and partners provided essential education materials for students and teachers of community-based schools; without these resources, many children – especially girls and those from poor families – would not have been able to attend school.

Building the capacity of teachers

The lack of qualified teachers in conflict-affected and rural areas of Afghanistan remains one of the biggest challenges of the education sector. To build teachers’ capacity, UNICEF and partners have provided teacher training before community-based schools were opened, while teachers in existing schools were offered retraining to further enhance their professional skills. In 2008, nearly 1,400 community-based teachers in Central Region received comprehensive training and learned how to create an appropriate child-friendly environment in the classroom.

In 2011, to continue improving education prospects for the war-torn children of Afghanistan, UNICEF and the Ministry of Education are focusing on increasing student enrolment and retention, raising female literacy rates, boosting teacher capacity and ensuring that quality basic education is available for all girls and boys in the country.

Back on Track Programme

Afghanistan is one of the 40 countries that has benefitted significantly from the Back on Track programme since its inception. EEPCT funds have made a substantive impact on bolstering the resilience of education provision during the protracted emergency and therefore paving the way for a better future for Afghani children.

As of 2010, results achieved from the programme have increased the education opportunities for 500,000 children in targeted countries affected by emergencies, who are among the most vulnerable, and strengthened the capacity of education systems to withstand renewed conflict or crisis.

Related links:

Consolidated Report – Back on Track programme in 2010: Results achieved during the fourth year
Unique programme improves the quality of education in Haiti after the quake

© UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0508/ParadelaChildren wait with their families to register at the Jalala camp in Mardan district, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Last year in Afghanistan there were nearly 300 documented attacks on schools, killing 92 people and injuring 169. In Pakistan, 172 government and private schools, particularly girls’ schools, have been destroyed in the Swat Valley district since 2007.

More schools have also closed due to security concerns following threats or attacks against teachers and students in both countries.

Against the backdrop of the intensifying conflict in Pakistan, the protection of children and their right to education must be kept at the forefront of dialogues about resolving the crisis – this according to a panel of experts speaking out in a podcast discussion moderated by Amy Costello at UN Radio.

‘Ruining’ a generation

“Going to school, if you’re a girl or if you’re a teacher at a school that serves girls, is a great risk,” says United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Afghanistan Country Programme Director Wenny Kusuma.

Human rights lawyer and Equality Now Deputy Director of Programmes Yasmeen Hassan describes the pervading fear of long-term consequences for Pakistan after the Taliban banned girls education in the Swat region and broadcast radio messages threatening girls with acid attacks and death if they went to school.

“In the words of one person from Swat, ‘Our future generations are getting ruined,’” notes Ms. Hassan.

Reasons for the conflict

Journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy – who recently travelled through Pakistan for her latest film, ‘Pakistan’s Taliban Generation’ – argues that the failure of the government to provide its people with a legitimate education system is behind the escalating conflict, to the detriment of both girls and boys.

“There are over 15,000 schools in Pakistan which are known as ghost schools. The buildings exist just on paper. There are teachers who draw salaries, but nobody goes to school. There is no school. So the Government of Pakistan has failed its citizens,” says Ms. Obaid-Chinoy.

“This lack of access to education is something that the militants and Islamic fundamentalists thrive on,” she adds, “because then they set up centres where they provide food, clothing, lodging … under the guise of teaching children the Koran. Right now, the biggest problem in Pakistan is that the war is not going to end tomorrow because no one is addressing the reasons for this war.”

And the primary reason for the war, asserts Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, “in my view and in the work that I’ve seen in Pakistan, is education.”

Rights disintegrating

Ms. Kusuma warns that if Pakistan continues down its current path, the erosion of human rights will only worsen.

“Afghanistan is fast-forward what will happen in Pakistan, where we have the absence and isolation of women from both the public and private spheres,” she says. “There is no sense of women being collateral damage here. There is a conflict being waged… on a terrain that is the minds and bodies of women and girls.”

Ms. Obaid-Chinoy similarly paints a worrying picture for Pakistan: “Women in Pakistan are really afraid. They’re afraid for their future. Who knows if my daughter or the next generation will be able to get an education in this country, the way my generation did? Who knows if they’ll be able to work the way I was able to work?

“Everything is changing in Pakistan, and it’s changing very rapidly.”

This podcast features:

Wenny Kusuma, Country Programme Director, UNIFEM Afghanistan; Yasmeen Hassan, human rights lawyer and Deputy Director of Programmes, Equality Now; and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, journalist and award-wining documentary filmmaker.

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Podcast 14

Click here to listen to other podcast in the “BEYOND SCHOOL BOOKS” series.

(c) UNICEF/NYHQ20071087/Noorani
A girl reads aloud in a tent classroom at Phool-e-Rangeena Government School in the north-western city of Herat, Afghanistan.

NEW YORK, USA- Despite a deepening global economic crisis, member states were urged to increase both attention and aid to education in countries that have been hit by natural disasters or conflict.

“It will, in fact, ultimately benefit the economy of donor countries to also help support the economies of developing countries – both in general and in terms of education,” said UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education Nicholas Burnett.

“If a child doesn’t go to school, or doesn’t learn while in school because of a temporary cut-off in funds, that loss unfortunately tends to be permanent,” he added.

Financing gap persists

Nearly 60 million children are out of school in countries and territories affected by conflict. Over half of them are girls.

Even with recent positive developments made possible by funding from donors such as the Dutch, British, Canadian, Swedish and Norwegian Governments, there is still a huge financing gap for education in emergencies and early reconstruction.

“Education cannot continue responding to the necessities of markets,” added UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Vernor Muñoz. “We need to start building a new world, and the only way is to invest in education.”

Protection for schools

Another key concern highlighted at the meeting was the rise in attacks against schools worldwide.

“The Committee on the Rights on the Child learned that attacks on schools, teachers, and students have increased in recent years,” said UN Committee on the Rights of the Child member Lothar Krappmann. “One of our messages is to pay more attention to these cruel facts.”

In Afghanistan alone, there were 133 documented cases of school attacks from 2006 to 2007. When asked about the repercussions of the lack of education services throughout the country, Save the Children Afghanistan Country Director Leslie Wilson reiterated that education is a fundamental human right.

“If you have an un- or under-educated people, it just can’t be good for the development of democracy, rule of law and civil society, because people just don’t know what their rights are,” she said.

Discussion on education in emergencies

How critical is education for communities in times of natural disasters and war? What kind of challenges will the global economic crisis pose for agencies trying to deliver education services to children in emergency countries?

Nicholas Burnett, Assistant Director General for Education, UNESCO; Lothar Krappmann, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Vernor Muñoz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education; and Leslie Wilson, Afghanistan Country Director, Save the Children.

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Click here (Real player) to listen to a UNICEF Radio podcast discussion on the global education crisis, featuring these guests:

Click here to listen to other podcast in the “BEYOND SCHOOL BOOKS” series.

At UN headquarters, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson (centre) moderates a panel on making education a priority in emergency and post-emergency situations. At left is UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education Nicholas Burnett.
©UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0209/Markisz

NEW YORK, USA, 18 March 2009 – The United Nations General Assembly hosted a thematic debate on education in emergencies today, with participation by representatives of Member States, academia and civil society, as well as UN experts, teachers and students.

UNICEF was on hand at the debate to press for outcomes that will benefit children who are suffering in emergency situations that rob them of their right to an education.

UNESCO’s Special Envoy on basic and higher education, Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned, gave a keynote speech at the event. Then panels convened on the debate’s three topics: ‘Rights and Promises’, ‘Practicalities and Possibilities’, and ‘Shared Accountability’.

The panels were all based on the premise, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that education is a right for everyone, everywhere – even during wars or natural disasters. The Convention on the Rights of the Child also cites education as a right.

Restoring a sense of stability

Despite these guarantees, however, education is often one of the first victims of an emergency. Approximately 75 million children worldwide are not enrolled in primary school – and more than half of them live in countries affected by conflict.

“Afghanistan is hit hard by conflict,” said Afghan youth activist Maiwand Rahyab. “Education can be very crucial to bringing back normality and peace…. Education can create the kind of environment for children so that they can cope with the traumas associated with conflicts.”

In fact, getting children back to school quickly during or after a crisis is a proven way to protect them, and schools can offer safe spaces for learning as well as for recovery.

“What we’re trying to do through this debate and through the international campaign is to make education an important part of emergency planning and programming,” said the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy. “Schools and education are [about] more than just teaching – they could become places where children are safe and secure.”

Out-of-school children at risk

Other speakers noted that during conflict, children who are not in school or other safe spaces face higher risks of abduction and recruitment into armed groups. Out-of-school children are also more susceptible to sexual exploitation, trafficking and child labour.

“In Haiti, safe spaces are a problem because schools are old and we need to rebuild the schools, and the government has no resources to do that,” said education specialist Wildenes Etienne, who current works for Catholic Relief Services and manages a UNICEF-supported emergency back-to-school programme in Haiti.

“When we are in an emergency, many children lose the possibility to get an education,” he added.

Education as ‘infrastructure’

In the longer term, education can contribute directly to the social, economic and political stability of societies.

As several participants in the debate explained, schools help reduce the risk of violent conflict by enhancing social cohesion and supporting conflict resolution and peace-building.

“Education, in a way, is not only a right but it can be seen as infrastructure – a basic infrastructure – in the society,” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson. This is a way of building nations and re-building nations. This is a fundamentally important issue for every country.”

Investing in learners

Today’s thematic debate sought to address the collective obligation to ensure that the right to education for all is fulfilled, especially in the most difficult environments.

Among other recommendations, participants called for major investments to be made now in rebuilding education systems in emergency and post-crisis transition countries. They also urged the use of innovative approaches to build these systems better than they were prior to the emergency. Support for affected children and communities was advocated, as well – to provide a means for societies to heal their wounds and resume development against great odds.

Maiwand, the Afghan youth activist, summed up the urgency of these issue in his response to a question about the message he wanted to leave with debate participants.

“Education is a fundamental right of every child in the world,” he said. “They need to support the education of children in emergencies now. They can’t wait. They can’t postpone it.”

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UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson outlines the importance of children’s right to an education, even in the midst of emergencies

In Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, a page from a school notebook that bears the UNICEF logo lies amid other burnt papers and books.
©UNICEF/NYHQ2003-0557/Brooks

KABUL, Afghanistan, 14 November 2008 – UNICEF has condemned the increasing number of attacks on schools and students in Afghanistan. A recent acid attack on 15 female students walking to school in the southern city of Kandahar blinded two of the girls and injured two others.

“We are concerned about the rising number of attacks on schools, teachers and students that are being targeted. The violence has to stop,” said UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan Catherine Mbengue.

So far this year, there have been 256 violent school incidents, resulting in some 58 deaths and 46 injuries. In 2007, arsonists were to blame for a total of 236 school incidents.

A safe space for children

Communities in war-torn Afghanistan have been working to overcome violence and other obstacles that can hinder children, especially girls, from attending school.

Despite the often difficult environment, student enrolment in the country has continued to rise. Over 6 million Afghan children now attend school, in comparison to 3 million in 2002.

UNICEF maintains that schools should provide a safe space for children and that the targeting of schools, innocent teachers and school children must cease.