The Regional Forum on the Protection of the Right to Education during Insecurity and Armed Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa Region was organized from 19-21 January 2014 in  Jordan as one of the main activities of a joint project between the United Nations Training and Documentation Centre for South-west Asia and the Arab Region (OHCHR-Doha Centre) and Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC) – a program of Education Above All Foundation.

The  report final provides information on the forum: its objectives, its findings and recommendations.

This publication considers how attacks on education during insecurity and armed conflict have been redressed in the past and may be redressed in the future. In identifying innovative approaches and new trends in the field of reparation, it reflects on how education can be used as a means of reparation and as a means to minimise the risk of conflicts recurring. In doing so, the publication brings together wide-ranging examples of law and practice from the international, regional and domestic spheres through an analysis of the relevant law in each sphere.

This study examines the use of schools and other education institutions for military purposes by government armed forces and opposition or pro-government armed groups during times of armed conflict or insecurity. Schools are used for barracks, logistics bases, operational headquarters, weapons and ammunition caches, detention and interrogation centres, firing and observation positions, and recruitment grounds.

The study highlights examples of good practice, in which governments have adopted policies that explicitly ban or restrict militaries from using education facilities.

The study also calls upon states, local organisations, and relevant international agencies to rigorously monitor military use of education institutions to devise effective, coordinated responses, including preventative interventions, rapid response, and both legal and non-legal accountability measures for those individuals or groups who contravene existing laws, judicial orders, or military orders.

This global study examines threats or deliberate use of force against students, teachers, academics, education trade union members, government officials, aid workers and other education staff, and against schools, universities and other education institutions, carried out for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic or religious reasons in 2009-2013; and military use of education buildings and facilities. It focuses on targeted attacks by state military and security forces and armed non-state groups on education facilities, students or staff, not death, injury or destruction resulting from being caught in crossfire.

It does not examine school attacks by lone armed individuals with none of the above-listed motives or affiliations, such as the school shooting at Sandy Hook in the United States in 2012.

The report examines the different types of attacks on schools, what motivates attacks and their impact on children. Country case studies are included, looking at attacks on education in Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, occupied Palestinian territory and Israel, Pakistan and Syria.

Only very low levels of humanitarian funding are provided for education. This prevents the education sector from responding swiftly to needs after periods of intense conflict – including responding to the effects of attacks on education and restoring schooling.

This report sets out how education can be better protected from attacks and how the international community can support ways of restoring education when it has been affected by conflict. It makes recommendations to governments, the UN, and humanitarian donors and agencies.

 

The report, Education Denied: Israel’s Systematic Violation of Palestinian Children’s Right to Education, was prepared for the July 2011 High-Level Segment of UN-ECOSOC in Geneva, Switzerland and reviews the implementation of the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the United Nations Development Agenda in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).

The report informs that the the achievement of the MDG on education is  proving unattainable as a result of illegal policies enacted as part of Israel’s longstanding occupation. By denying Palestinian children full access to high-quality primary education, Israel, the Occupying Power, is failing to comply with its binding obligations under international law.

Through this report, PCHR asks that the international community take all appropriate measures to end Israel's repeated violations of international law which inhibit basic human rights, including education, and development goals in the oPt.

This report begins by examining some of the explicit and implicit causes of attacks on girls’ education during peacetime and in situations of crisis, including settings of armed conflict, political instability and widespread criminal violence. It looks at the impact of attacks against girls accessing education on their rights to and within educational systems as well as the broader consequences of these attacks on the promotion and protection of human rights through education by focusing on the linkages between education and a host of other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The applicable international legal and policy framework is then outlined and the situation of girls accessing education within settings of crisis, political instability and conflict is analysed in greater detail. The final section of the report provides several recommendations to States and other stakeholders aimed at preventing and redressing violations of girls’ rights to, within and through education.

 

This study examines the use of schools and universities for military purposes by government armed forces and opposition or pro-government armed groups during times of armed conflict or insecurity. Schools are used for barracks, logistics bases, operational headquarters, weapons and ammunition caches, detention and interrogation centres, firing and observation positions, and recruitment grounds.

The study highlights examples of good practice, in which governments have adopted policies that explicitly ban or restrict militaries from using education facilities.

The study also calls upon states, local organisations, and relevant international agencies to rigorously monitor military use of education institutions to devise effective, coordinated responses, including preventative interventions, rapid response, and both legal and non-legal accountability measures for those individuals or groups who contravene existing laws, judicial orders, or military orders.

The conflict has had a brutal impact on education in Yemen; 34% of children in the country have not gone to school since the conflict began in March 2015. As of October 2015 1.8 million children were not in school. In some cases parents and children are deterred from going to school because of fear of airstrikes, while in others, schools have been rendered unusable due to the conflict either because they have been damaged or destroyed. Amnesty International investigated five strikes that took place between August and October 2015 in Hodeidah, Hajjah, and Sana’a governorates, which appear to have directly targeted schools. These strikes killed five and injured at least 14 civilians, including four children. They have severely disrupted the education of the some 6,550 children who regularly attended the schools.

El presente informe se ha preparado de conformidad con las resoluciones 8/4 y 17/3 del Consejo de Derechos Humanos. Está dedicado a la financiación nacional de la educación básica. Se detallan las obligaciones de derechos humanos sobre la financiación de la educación y se proporcionan ejemplos prácticos de marcos jurídicos nacionales que garantizan la financiación nacional. El informe contiene también una actualización de la situación de la educación en situaciones de emergencia, de conformidad con la resolución 64/290 de la Asamblea General. El Relator Especial destaca que la atención que se presta y la financiación que se dedica a la educación en situaciones de emergencia siguen siendo insuficientes e inadecuadas y pide que se realicen más inversiones en actividades de prevención y para ofrecer una mejor protección a la educación durante conflictos armados.

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