Scholars at Risk announces the release of Free to Think, a report of the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. The culmination of four years of monitoring and analysis by SAR staff and researchers around the world, the report analyzes 333 attacks on higher education communities in 65 countries from January 2011 to May 2015, demonstrating the pressing need to raise awareness and document attacks on higher education:
- There is a crisis of attacks on higher education communities around the world.
- Attacks on universities, scholars and students are early warning signs of political, social and cultural insecurity.
- Universities and scholars are critical parts of national infrastructure that is essential to rebuilding conflict torn states.
The report calls on all stakeholders, including the international community, states, the higher education sector, civil society and the public at large to undertake concrete actions to increase protection for higher education communities, including documenting and investigating attacks, and holding perpetrators accountable.
This study on academic freedom seeks to get first-hand perspectives on the state of academic freedom and its protection at institutional and national levels, examining what policies and mechanisms are put in place to protect this freedom, how academic freedom is threatened or curtailed, and finally what recourse may be available to the members of the academic community to complain and seek redress concerning such violations.
Free to Think 2020 analyzes 341 attacks on higher education communities in 58 countries between September 1, 2019 and August 31, 2020. The report draws on data from SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project and identifies trends related to attacks on higher education communities, including violent attacks on campuses in Afghanistan, India, and Yemen; wrongful imprisonments and prosecutions of scholars; restrictions on academic travel, deployed most prominently by authorities in Israel, Turkey, and the United States; pressures on student expression included sustained pressures in Colombia, India, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and South Africa; and legislative and administrative threats to university autonomy, including in Brazil, Ghana, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Turkey.
Free to Think 2020 analyzes 341 attacks on higher education communities in 58 countries between September 1, 2019 and August 31, 2020. The report draws on data from Scholars At Risk’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project and identifies trends related to attacks on higher education communities, including violent attacks on campuses in Afghanistan, India, and Yemen; wrongful imprisonments and prosecutions of scholars; restrictions on academic travel, deployed most prominently by authorities in Israel, Turkey, and the United States; pressures on student expression included sustained pressures in Colombia, India, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and South Africa; and legislative and administrative threats to university autonomy, including in Brazil, Ghana, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Turkey.
Si les données sur les attaques contre l’éducation sont devenues plus largement disponibles grâce à une meilleure prise de conscience et aux efforts des organisations nationales et internationales et des organes de contrôle, des lacunes de données critiques subsistent. Les systèmes de signalement peuvent être absents, médiocres ou déconnectés des réponses efficaces aux attaques contre l’éducation. Les moniteurs, ainsi que les victimes et les témoins, peuvent faire face à des menaces pour leur sécurité, ou l’insécurité peut empêcher les observateurs d’accéder aux zones où des attaques se produisent. De ce fait, un grand nombre d’attaques et incidents d’utilisation militaire ne sont pas signalés, ce qui compromet les efforts de calcul de leur prévalence.
Même lorsqu’il existe des mécanismes de signalement, les données ne sont pas souvent ventilées par genre, âge, lieu, type d’attaque ou auteur. Les violations telles que le recrutement d’enfants et la violence sexuelle par les forces armées ou les groupes armés à l’école ou sur le chemin de l’école sont souvent sous-déclarées. Les impacts des attaques contre l’éducation et de l’usage militaire – comme les jours d’école perdus, les abandons et les fermetures d’écoles – restent difficiles à calculer en raison de ces écarts. Et même lorsque la collecte de données a lieu régulièrement, leur analyse et leur signalement ne se produisent pas toujours à intervalles réguliers.
Les pages suivantes présentent un Kit pratique pour collecter et analyser les données sur les attaques contre l’éducation exhaustif qui comble les lacunes susmentionnées dans la collecte de données ; favorise la collaboration intersectorielle sur la collecte, l’analyse et la communication des données ; et renforce et harmonise les définitions et les concepts liés aux attaques contre l’éducation.
While data on attacks on education has become more widely available thanks to better awareness and efforts by national and international organizations and monitoring bodies, critical data gaps remain. Reporting systems may be absent, weak, or disconnected from effective responses to attacks on education. Monitors, as well as victims and witnesses, may face threats to their safety, or insecurity may prevent monitors from accessing areas where attacks occur. As such, many attacks and incidents of military use go unreported, undermining efforts to calculate their prevalence.
Even when reporting mechanisms exist, data is not often disaggregated by gender, age, location, type of attack, or perpetrator. Violations such as child recruitment and sexual violence by armed forces or armed groups at, or en route to, school often go underreported. The impacts of attacks on education and military use – such as school days lost, drop-outs, and school closures – remain difficult to calculate due to such gaps. And even when data collection occurs regularly, its analysis and reporting do not always occur at regular intervals.
The following pages comprise a comprehensive Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Attacks on Education which addresses the abovementioned gaps in data collection; promotes inter-sectoral collaboration on data collection, analysis, and reporting; and strengthens and harmonizes definitions and concepts related to attacks on education.
L’originalité de cette approche consiste à considérer la vie éducationnelle comme une relation vivante entre des acteurs (élèves, éducateurs, organisations et autres acteurs associés) et des ensembles de connaissances qui forment des ressources culturelles communes, porteuses « d’identité, de valeurs et de sens », sans lesquelles les acteurs ne peuvent rien.
In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 8/4 and 44/3, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education considers the cultural dimensions of the right to education, which are crucial to ensuring that the universal right to inclusive and quality education is realized, as called for in Sustainable Development Goal 4. The Special Rapporteur calls for the right to education to be viewed as a cultural right – that is, as the right of each person to the cultural resources necessary to freely follow a process of identification, to experience mutually rewarding relations his or her life long, to deal with the crucial challenges facing our world and to engage in the practices that make it possible to take ownership of and contribute to these resources.
What is unique about this approach is its conception of educational life as a living relationship between actors (students, educators, organizations and other associated actors) and collections of knowledge that form shared cultural resources, vectors of identity, values and meaning, without which action is impossible.
En este informe, presentado en cumplimiento de las resoluciones 8/4 y 44/3 del Consejo de Derechos Humanos, la Relatora Especial sobre el derecho a la educación examina las dimensiones culturales del derecho a la educación, que son cruciales para lograr la plena efectividad del derecho universal a una educación inclusiva y de calidad, como preconiza el Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible 4. En su análisis, la Relatora Especial señala, a partir de numerosas experiencias nacionales, elementos que favorecen el respeto de la diversidad y los derechos culturales de todos en la educación, a saber: a) La valoración de los recursos culturales presentes; c) La descentralización en favor de los actores locales y la dotación de cierta autonomía a las escuelas para garantizar la pertinencia cultural del aprendizaje; d) Los métodos de observación participativa y sistémica; e) El respeto de las libertades en el ámbito de la educación, en particular. La Relatora Especial hace un llamamiento para que el derecho a la educación se considere un derecho cultural en sí mismo, es decir, como el derecho de toda persona a tener acceso a los recursos culturales necesarios para desarrollar libremente su propio proceso de definición de la identidad, tener relaciones dignas de reconocimiento mutuo a lo largo de su vida y afrontar los desafíos cruciales a los que se enfrenta nuestro mundo, así como para participar en las prácticas que le permitan apropiarse de estos recursos y contribuir a ellos.
La originalidad de este enfoque radica en considerar la vida educativa como una relación viva entre los actores (alumnos, educadores, organizaciones y otros actores asociados) y el conjunto de conocimientos que forman los recursos culturales comunes, portadores “de identidad, de valores y sentido”, sin los cuales los actores no pueden hacer nada.
This list contains 51 indicators relevant to the monitoring of education under attack. They are divided into four sections - Attacks on schools and universities; Attacks on students, teachers and other educational personnel; Military use of schools and universities; and transversal or cross cutting indicators, which apply to more than one category and that are crucial to the analysis from a human rights’ perspective.
Each indicator is accompanied by comments and supplementary detail.