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Africa: Reclaiming Schools As Zones of Peace, Culture
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The East African (Nairobi)
OPINION
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Hellen - Marie Gosselin
Nairobi
For Safia Ama Jan who championed education in Afghanistan for three decades, school was a sacred place. To her, the future of Afghanistan rests with ending the senseless violence and discrimination that keeps girls hostages of their own communities.
Under the repressive Taliban regime, she ran a clandestine school for girls from her home in Kandahar Province. In the wake of the Taliban regimes's demise, she worked tirelessly to get Afghan girls back into school.
As provincial director for women's affairs, she put her life at risk everyday through her work - because she believed that access to education is a basic human right. In September 2006, she was shot and killed outside her home.
As we mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let's think about the ramifications of education or the lack thereof. Prosperity and peace can only be achieved if we commit to ending the injustice of denying this right to the millions of children around the world who can't go to school, and who will nonetheless have to make their way in the world as adults. The numbers grab our attention: Unesco estimates that about 37 per cent of the 72 million children not in school live in conflict-affected areas.
Amongst the many casualties of conflict, education seldom makes the headlines, but students, teachers, administrators, and education officials are also on the front lines of battle, facing violent attacks.
LAST YEAR UNESCO HIGHLIGHTED THIS plight in a wide-ranging report, Education under Attack, hoping to raise awareness about this under-reported problem that affects countries from Afghanistan to Colombia, Thailand and Nepal, to name a few.
The nature of the attacks varies greatly: bombings, targeted assassinations, destruction of educational buildings, even abduction of teachers and recruitment of children as child soldiers.
Violence in schools is also prevalent in so-called stable and prosperous countries: bullying, shootings, discrimination, and corporal punishment, are becoming more common in countries that pride themselves as models of human rights enforcers.
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION IS TO REplace an empty mind with an open one," said Malcolm S. Forbes. Schools are not only places to acquire skills and knowledge. They are also places to learn about ethics, moral values, and tolerance and understanding of cultures.
Unesco's approach to addressing violence and building peace intertwines the forces of culture and education. Culture shapes our frames of reference, our ways of thinking and acting, and our educational content.
Unesco recently published Guidelines on Intercultural Education as part of its programme to provide quality education for all. To this end, learning about other cultures, beliefs and religions, and ways of life, and building understanding of, respect for, and dialogue between the different cultural groups is deemed essential.
WORLD LEADERS COMMITTED TO ACHIEVing the Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015 in order to improve the lives of billions of people across the globe and to ensure a lasting world peace. But there cannot be peace without upholding the right to education, or without ending the vicious cycle of violence in and against our schools.
Can we not open doors to the 72 million children not in school, teach peaceful co-existence, and make all our schools the sacred place envisioned by the late Safia Ama Jan?
Hellen-Marie Gosselin is the director of the Unesco Office at the United Nations
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