UNITED NATIONS
The number of reported attacks against students, teachers and educational facilities for political or military reasons has increased dramatically in the past three years, according to a recent U.N. study.
The countries that are most affected are Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Nepal, the Palestinian territories, Thailand and Zimbabwe, the study showed.
Brendan O’Malley, who prepared the report for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, told a news conference on Thursday that the violent incidents range from multiple deaths in bombings and by gunfire to targeted assassinations, destruction of buildings, the recruitment of school-age children as soldiers, and the occupation of schools by armed groups.
“Attacks on education often escape international attention amid the general fighting in conflict-affected countries,” the report said. “But the number of reported assassinations, bombings and burnings of school and academic staff and buildings has risen dramatically in the past three years, reflecting the increasingly bloody nature of local conflicts around the world.”
In Iraq, O’Malley said, 280 academics were killed between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and April this year “in a campaign of liquidation.” In Afghanistan, he said, there were 190 bombing, arson and missile attacks on education targets in 2005 and 2006. In Colombia, 310 teachers have been murdered since 2000.
“In Thailand, there have been cases of teachers shot and burned in front of their classes. In Baghdad, there’s a case of a woman teacher who was raped and mutilated and her body hung up and left to hang outside the school for a number of days. … In Nepal, there are instances of head teachers being beheaded because they’ve been accused of cooperating with the government by Marxist guerrillas,” O’Malley said.
