June 20, 2024
More than 10,000
students, teachers, and academics were killed or harmed in thousands of attacks
on education in 2022 and 2023, according to research published Thursday amid
Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, which has seen its schools and
universities decimated by the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing campaign.
Palestinian
students attend a school operated by the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Deir
Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on February 24, 2024.Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Global
Coalition to Protect Education From Attack (GCPEA) identified roughly 6,000
attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, a 10% increase compared to the two
preceding years. The highest number of attacks took place in occupied
Palestine, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar, and
explosive weapons — including rockets and landmines — were involved in about a
third of the attacks.
“In places like
Gaza, in addition to the horrific loss of life, education itself is under
attack,” Lisa Chung Bender, GCPEA’s executive director, said in a statement.
“School and university systems have been shut down, and in some cases
completely destroyed. This will have long-term consequences on social and
economic recovery, as the very infrastructure needed for peace and stability
have been targeted.”
GCPEA
researchers estimate that more than 475 attacks on schools took place in
Palestine last year, surging after Israel launched its large-scale assault on
Gaza following the deadly Hamas-led attack on October 7. Israeli forces have
damaged or destroyed every university in the Gaza Strip as part of what United
Nations experts have described as a “systemic obliteration of education.”
In addition to
attacks on education infrastructure, the new report shows that targeted attacks
on students, teachers, and prominent academics have become more frequent
worldwide in recent years.
“More than
10,000 students and educators were reportedly killed, injured, abducted,
arrested, or otherwise harmed by attacks on education in 2022 and 2023,”
GCPEA’s new report notes. “The number of students, teachers, professors, and
education staff killed or injured increased by over 10% compared to 2020 and
2021, the period covered in the last Education Under Attack report.”
Jerome Marston,
a senior researcher at GCPEA, said that “on average, eight attacks on education
were recorded daily over the past two years, meaning a startling number of
students were unable to follow their dreams of learning, or develop the skills
that an education promises.”
“Schools should
be safe havens, not targets,” said Marston.
The new report
stresses that growing attacks on education have taken place “against a backdrop
of increasing conflict” and a worsening climate emergency, which GCPEA said
“may be linked to attacks on education” such as the “lootings of school
canteens” in areas impacted by severe hunger.
“In late March
2022, a suspected armed group allegedly looted a school canteen in Komangou
village, Gourma province, Est Region, Burkina Faso, on two consecutive days, as
reported by a local media outlet,” the report observes. “On November 16, 2022,
a suspected armed group allegedly attacked a school and looted its canteen in
Fatakara village, Timbuktu region, Mali.”
Additionally,
the report makes a preliminary connection between climate-fueled extreme
weather events and attacks on education.
“For instance,
in the Philippines, climate change has contributed to more intense typhoons,
affecting in particular the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
that has faced decades of protracted armed conflict,” the report notes. “The
U.N. reported that an armed group in the region attacked a school being used as
shelter by people displaced by emergencies while state security forces were
nearby for disaster-relief efforts.”
GCPEA calls on
all parties to armed conflicts across the globe to “immediately cease attacks
on education” and urges governments to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration, an
international effort to protect education during war.
Neither the U.S.
nor Israel have backed the declaration.
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