Attack

Afghanistan: Top UN officials strongly condemn ‘heinous’ attack on girls school

Noticias

Asia/Afghanistan/14-05-2021/Author/Source: news.un.org

Two senior UN officials on Wednesday, condemned in the strongest terms, a terrorist attack targeting girls and their families outside a high school in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

The terrorists who exploded a bomb near a girls’ school in the mostly Shiite district of west Kabul in Dasht-e-Barchi on Saturday “must be held accountable” for their “heinous crime”, the UN Special Representatives for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, and on Violence Against Children, Najat Maalla M’jid, said in a joint statement.

According to news reports, scores of people – many of them students between the ages of 11 and 15 – were killed and hundreds of others injured.

Safeguard girls education

The UN officials also called on the Afghan authorities to urgently protect the right to education in armed conflict, especially for girls, which is too often overlooked and neglected.

“In many contexts, access to education is particularly harsh for girls for economic and cultural reasons, but also for security reasons of which the recent attack in Afghanistan is only one latest tragic example”, they said, pushing for the safety of schools “and that girls just like boys are given equal opportunities to pursue their education”.

Afghanistan schools targeted

Afghanistan schools and hospitals remain one of the most attacked, according to the 2019 Secretary-General Report on Children and Armed Conflict. And preliminary data for 2020 show a similar worrying trend, with COVID-19 further exacerbating the vulnerabilities of children, including girls.

“Girls may not be given the choice to go back to school when they reopen, because they had to work or be married off to support their families”, said the two UN officials.

Against the backdrop of the unremitting challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, they stressed that “countries must make the strategic decision of prioritizing education, including in armed conflict in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of reaching the furthest behind”.

Undermining women’s roles

Targeting girls undermines the crucial role that educated girls and women play in the social and economic development of their societies.

The Special Representatives underlined the urgency of ending the violence in Afghanistan and achieving a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

They also extended their condolences to the victim’s families and the Government of Afghanistan and wished a full recovery to those who were injured in the horrific terrorist attack.

Source and Image: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1091842

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Children under attack at shocking scale in conflicts around the world, says UNICEF

Noticias

Nueva York / 31 de diciembre de 2017 / Fuente: https://www.unicef.org

Download photos, video and b-roll here:http://uni.cf/2kfq2jU

Children in conflict zones around the world have come under attack at a shocking scale throughout the year, UNICEF warned today, with parties to conflicts blatantly disregarding international laws designed to protect the most vulnerable.

“Children are being targeted and exposed to attacks and brutal violence in their homes, schools and playgrounds,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes. “As these attacks continue year after year, we cannot become numb. Such brutality cannot be the new normal.”

In conflicts around the world, children have become frontline targets, used as human shields, killed, maimed and recruited to fight. Rape, forced marriage, abduction and enslavement have become standard tactics in conflicts from Iraq, Syria and Yemen, to Nigeria, South Sudan and Myanmar.

In some contexts, children abducted by extremist groups experience abuse yet again upon release when they are detained by security forces. Millions more children are paying an indirect price for these conflicts, suffering from malnutrition, disease and trauma as basic services – including access to food, water, sanitation and health – are denied, damaged or destroyed in the fighting.

Over the course of 2017:

– In Afghanistan, almost 700 children were killed in the first 9 months of the year.
– In the Central African Republic, after months of renewed fighting, a dramatic increase in violence saw children being killed, raped, abducted and recruited by armed groups.
– In the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence has driven 850,000 children from their homes, while more than 200 health centres and 400 schools were attacked. An estimated 350,000 children have suffered from severe acute malnutrition.
– In northeast Nigeria and Cameroon, Boko Haram has forced at least 135 children to act as suicide bombers, almost five times the number in 2016.
– In Iraq and Syria, children have reportedly been used as human shields, trapped under siege, targeted by snipers and lived through intense bombardment and violence.
– In Myanmar, Rohingya children suffered and witnessed shocking and widespread violence as they were attacked and driven from their homes in Rakhine state; while children in remote border areas of Kachin, Shan, and Kayin states continued to suffer the consequences of ongoing tensions between the Myanmar Armed Forces and various ethnic armed groups.
– In South Sudan, where conflict and a collapsing economy led to a famine declaration in parts of the country, more than 19,000 children have been recruited into armed forces and armed groups, and over 2,300 children have been killed or injured since the conflict first erupted in December 2013.
– In Somalia, 1,740 cases of child recruitment were reported in the first 10 months of 2017.
– In Yemen, nearly 1,000 days of fighting left at least 5,000 children dead or injured, according to verified data, with actual numbers expected to be much higher. More than 11 million children need humanitarian assistance. Out of 1.8 million children suffering from malnutrition, 385,000 are severely malnourished and at risk of death if not urgently treated.
– In eastern Ukraine, 220,000 children lived under constant threat of mines and other explosive remnants of war due to the 500 kilometer ‘contact line’ – the strip of land where fighting is most severe – becoming one of the most mine-contaminated places on earth.
UNICEF calls on all parties to conflict to abide by their obligations under international law to immediately end violations against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. UNICEF also calls on States with influence over parties to conflict to use that influence to protect children.

Across all these countries, UNICEF works with partners to provide the most vulnerable children with health, nutrition, education and child protection services.

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Fuente noticia: https://www.unicef.org/media/media_102357.html

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UNICEF: Global Coalition Fights Education Under Attack In Conflict Zones

UNICEF

UNICEF/August 8, 2017/By Riley Bunch/ Source: http://reliefweb.int

According to UNICEF, conflict zones around the world are preventing 25 million young students from getting access to education. Schools being targets for attacks, military use and occupation by armed forces has caused global concern surrounding protection of education under attack in conflict zones.

In 2010, The United Nations alongside multiple non-governmental organizations recognized the need for immediate action. As a solution to this problem, they created the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). The agencies coming together acknowledged the need for implementation of policies and programs to protect students and teachers from deliberate attacks.

The multidisciplinary coalition, in hand with humanitarian law agencies, education in emergency groups, and child protection agencies, now focuses on advocacy among ministries and government bodies in conflict affected countries on how to reduce war crimes on schools and increase safety for future generations.

Diya Nijhowne, director of the GCPEA, addresses the phenomenon as a major global crisis—one that is only growing.

“Sadly, the problems of schools and universities being bombed and burned and students being raped, killed, executed, abducted from their schools is continuing,” Nijhowne said. “Generally, we have not seen it go down. And in some places, such as the middle east it is getting worse.”

Within a report titled Education Under Attack (based on data gathering for the period 2009-2013), over the past five years armed nonstate groups, state military, security forces and criminal groups have attacked thousands of primary students, university students, teachers, academic instituions and education establishments in at least 70 countries worldwide.

In coordination with the United Nations, the GCPEA has developed the Safe Schools Declaration. Within it are outlined steps, and procedures nations must implement to combat the issue of education under attack in conflict zones. Countries who have already endorsed the document get given training and programs to abide by the terms of the declaration.

These terms include monitoring education under attack in conflict zones and collecting accurate data to respond to the issue, creating contingency planning for emergency situations and creating “conflict sensitive” learning environments that can continue education under warring times.

Currently, 76 or one-third of the members of The United Nations states have signed onto the Safe Schools Declaration and agree that this issue is of high importance. Endangerment to education within conflict zones is not only physically impacting communities, but taking a severe psychological toll on students and staff.

“If you are worried your school is going to be bombed or this phenomenon of military use of schools as well,” Nijhowne said. “Forces might be in the classroom next to the kids or on the play field, just having that sort of militarized atmosphere is very stressful.”

One commitment countries must make when signing the Safe School Declaration is to assist victims. Support can range from making sure perpetrators are punished all the way to psycho-social support for the people impacted.

“Schools are traditionally there to provide routine, they provide safety, they have a protection function, not only within society but within a war zone,” Nijhowne said. “If that place that is supposed to be a sanctuary becomes somewhere that might be attacked that diminishes what would have been a protective function that the school is offering.”

Anecdotal evidence taken from reports done by the GCPEA shows that women and girls are disproportionately affected by education under attack in conflict zones. If military forces are present on school grounds, parents are more likely to be protective of their daughters and refrain from sending them to school. Also, if there is limited opportunity for children to attend school, parents often choose their sons to go to school rather than their daughters.

Under international law, there is no prohibition against using schools for military purposes. However, with the growing number of schools and universities getting targeted by the military, ministries and other government agencies around the world have become increasingly willing to work on alternative approaches to avoid using schools as bases.

GCPEA continues to work on addressing war crimes against education under attack in conflict zones and furthering their advocacy in countries who have yet to sign the Safe Schools Declaration.

Source:

http://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-coalition-fights-education-under-attack-conflict-zones

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