people and planet

17
Violence and attacks against civilian
populations in north-eastern Nigeria and
neighbouring countries have forced more
than 1 million children out of school
School violence cannot be addressed unless it is
better monitored
Wide-ranging information is becoming available on various
facets of school-related violence around the world. But
all three principal types of sources – self-reports, citizen
perceptions and police statistics – have their weaknesses.
A monitoring framework with standardized indicators
would be a first step to improve reporting. The Technical
Working Group on Data Collection on Violence against
Children can help draw attention to good practice and
methodological challenges. Core indicators should be
integrated into national systems and international surveys,
which currently approach school violence from a variety of
perspectives. A higher degree of coordination is required
to ensure that international surveys are carried out with
sufficient regularity in the next 15 years to measure
global school-based violence trends.
ATTACKS
Attacks related to education come in various forms.
They are any intentional threat or use of force, including
those directed at students and educators, at education
institutions, including recruitment into armed groups.
They can occur on the way to or from an education
institution because of someone’s status as a student
or educator. They can be directed at activists, including
teacher union members, as well as education personnel
and education aid workers. Schools, teachers and
students are often directly attacked, whether by state
security forces or non-state armed groups, for political,
military, ideological or sectarian reasons.
Such direct attacks have a disastrous effect on the
affected individuals, but the wider effects of a climate
of fear and instability can paralyse whole education
systems. The risk of attack can force schools to close and
discourage attendance and teacher recruitment. Violence
and attacks against civilian populations in north-eastern
Nigeria and neighbouring countries have forced more
than 1 million children out of school, putting them at
risk of dropping out altogether. In Nigeria alone, around
600 teachers have been killed during the Boko Haram
insurgency (UNICEF, 2015d).
Monitoring such attacks is necessary to respond
effectively and hold perpetrators accountable. However,
obtaining accurate information is particularly challenging
since incidents may often take place in remote
areas with poor security and infrastructure, where
governments may have little authority. More broadly,
systems enabling schools, teachers, students and
citizens to report incidents are often lacking.
One way to acquire first-hand, detailed data is to
improve schools’ capacity for reporting incidents to
the government. Human rights monitoring groups such
as the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee
on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Council
could then use the data to bring greater attention to
monitoring and reporting of attacks on education.
An open platform enabling teachers, students and
citizens to report incidents anonymously holds promise,
as those with information may lack skills, resources
or motivation to make reports, and may face serious
threats to their safety. The potential to receive such
real-time information is expanding with the growing
availability of mobile phone technology.
Following two reports published by UNESCO in 2007
and 2010, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from
Attack (GCPEA) launched the third Education under
Attack report in 2014. Based on analysis of interviews
and secondary sources, the report documented pervasive
violence against education institutions, teachers
and students. The majority of the incidents were
concentrated in certain countries. Between 2009 and
2012, 1,000 or more education-related attacks per country
took place in Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan, Somalia,
Sudan and the Syrian Arab Republic, and between 500
and 999 attacks in Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Mexico, Palestine and
Yemen (GCPEA, 2014). Military use of schools took place
in 26 countries between 2005 and 2015 (GCPEA, 2015). A
fourth report is scheduled for release in 2018.
ENDNOTES
1. This section draws on Wallet (2016).
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 317