Conflicts around the world are keeping tens of millions of youngpeople from going to school. Many have physical or emotionalinjuries that make it hard or even impossible for them to learn.
Later this year UNESCO will release its twenty-twelve "Education for All Global Monitoring Report."UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The yearlypublication is part of a global campaign to provide primary education to all children within the nextthree years.
The report documents the situation in countries that have made the least progress toward theMillennium Development Goals. These goals require universal primary education and equality forboys and girls in schooling by twenty-fifteen.
Pauline Rose is the director of the report.
PAULINE ROSE: "In those thirty-five conflict-affected countries, we find twenty-eight millionchildren out of school. In some countries, it's just that schools are not even accessible in conflictzones. The teachers aren't there. The schools are sometimes even attacked."
The Geneva Conventions bar the targeting of public places like schools and hospitals. In somecases, schools are targeted because they represent the government. Pauline Rose says in othercases, schools are targeted for religious or political reasons.
PAULINE ROSE: "So in Afghanistan, given that the idea of girls going to school has been part ofthe concern of some militant groups, that has been a cause for their direct attack on girls schools.In other parts of the world, it might be more that schools are caught in the crossfire."
Conflicts also put girls and boys at risk of sexual violence. Schoolchildren are also at risk of beingforced to become soldiers.
Under international law, refugees are the only displaced people with a guaranteed right toeducation. But that guarantee often means little. Schools in refugee camps often have limitedmoney for teachers and supplies.
Last year, Pauline Rose visited the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya. Those camps shelter morethan two hundred fifty thousand refugees from Somalia.
PAULINE ROSE: "So you have half of children without any access to school. You have sort ofclasses of over three hundred children, and I mean just the conditions getting worse and worse."
What if conflict states in sub-Saharan Africa moved just ten percent of their military spending toeducation? UNESCO says they could educate more than one-fourth of their out-of-schoolpopulation. And in Pakistan, it says twenty percent of the military budget could provide primaryeducation for all children.
But one country has been a real success story. For years, Botswana has used its wealth fromdiamond exports to finance universal primary education and to create a skills base for its growingeconomy.
