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PART I — GLOBAL OveRvIeW
succeeded in some cases. For example, in Somalia,
the UN has collected and used data on military use of
education facilities to secure the agreement of military
commanders to vacate schools. 186 In some instances,
negotiations have taken place successfully with
armed forces and groups at local level to ban certain
practices from school grounds, such as occupation
and use of schools and looting and burning of learning
materials and classroom furniture. In South Sudan,
community leaders and Parent Teacher Associations
(PTAs) play a central role, acting as steering
committees for county commissioners who negotiate
with government security forces. 187
Dialogue initiated by ministries of education or UN
partners with ministries of defence and leaders of the
national armed forces has led the latter to issue a
number of military directives to vacate school
premises, for instance in South Sudan. 188 In Mali, the
education ministry and the UN engaged in dialogue
with the defence ministry and a number of schools
were subsequently vacated. 189 In DRC, UN-led intervention
with military leaders resulted in the national
armed forces vacating schools. 190
Community-driven negotiations to develop and agree
to codes of conduct have also been undertaken in
countries such as Nepal and the Philippines, where a
number of communities have established
programmes whereby schools or ‘learning institutions’
become recognized as ‘Zones of Peace’ (SZOP
and LIZOP, respectively). In Nepal, one of the key
components of the SZOP programme was the writing
and signing of codes of conduct defining what was
and was not allowed on school grounds in order to
minimize violence, school closures and the politicization
of schooling. For instance, terms of the code
in some cases included: ‘No arrest or abduction of any
individual within the premises’, ‘no use of school to
camp’ or ‘no use of school as an armed base’. This was
achieved through collaboration among diverse
political and ethnic groups in widely publicized mass
meetings. 191 The signatory parties kept their commitments,
in general, and these efforts helped
communities to keep schools open, improving
protection as well as school governance. 192
Syrian children attend a small makeshift school,
set up for families who were scared to send their
children far in the midst of war, in a village in
northern Syria, 9 February 2013. The lessons are
taught by a medical student whose own studies
were cut short because of fighting.
© 2013 Lynsey Addario/VII
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