Girl wins International Children’s Peace Prize for promoting the rights of children with disabilities
By Rudina Vojvoda, UNICEF
Seventeen-year-old Michaela ‘Chaeli’ Mycroft was recently awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize for her work promoting the rights of children with disabilities in South Africa.
The International Children’s Peace Prize is awarded annually to a child whose efforts have successfully addressed problems faced by children around the world.
In 2004, 9-year-old Chaeli did just this when – together with her sister and three friends – she founded the Chaeli Campaign, an organization that provides equipment, physical therapy and programmes for children with disabilities, and advocates on their behalf.
Fighting for rights and inclusion
The girls started the campaign with the aim of raising enough money to buy a motorized wheelchair for Chaeli. Born with cerebral palsy, Chaeli has limited function in her legs and arms.
Her sister and friends designed and made postcards to sell in the streets. In less than 7 weeks, they had raised enough money to buy the wheelchair. Realizing that their efforts had even greater potential, they decided to continue working on behalf of other children with disabilities. They also began fight for the rights and inclusion of children with disabilities all over South Africa.
“We were working as a team and we have been a team for our entire lives,” Chaeli said. “We are very good at working together and we have a connection that really worked in our favour. I also knew that it was a good thing for me, so I was motivated.”
The campaign grew into a professional organization that helps more than 3,000 children a year, offering a variety of programmes ranging from physiotherapy, speech and occupational therapy. The organization also provides equipment to children with disabilities, from wheelchairs to custom-made assistance devices for improving posture, and works on education programs that support the inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream schools.
“We believe that inclusive education can really happen if a person with disability is supported,” Chaeli said, adding that families, teachers and students who are part of the child’s life need support as well. “Getting kids to mainstream environments is the first step to inclusive education,” said Chaeli.
‘Exciting opportunities’
Chaeli received the prestigious award at a ceremony in The Hague on 21 November 2011. The event was attended by more than 400 national and international guests, including representatives from governments, industry and non-governmental organizations. UNICEF Chief of Child Protection Susan Bissell spoke at the ceremony, and the prize was presented by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire.
As part of the award, Chaeli is entitled to a fund of €100,000 to spend on projects that aim to improve the lives of children with disabilities and promote their inclusion in society. It has also given Chaeli an opportunity to raise awareness about the issues facing children with disabilities.
“It has given me an international platform to share my message, and it’s going to bring a lot of exciting opportunities,” she said.
Discussing her plans, Chaeli said she is optimistic about the future and emboldened to do even more.
“I am going to be an ability activist, but I also want to become known for things that I do as an adult, as well as being known for the Chaeli Campaign,” she said. “I want to have my own identity that is not just the kid that started the organization. I am excited for the future. It’s going to be good.”
Education can play a crucial role in peacebuilding in all phases of conflict, a UNICEF-commissioned study has concluded, outlining how education can help prevent conflict and contribute to long-term peace.
A fundamental human right of a quality education for all children is most at risk during conflict situations. It is precisely at these times that education can impart knowledge and skills that provide protection and access to life-saving abilities. In the longer term, education can provide values and attitudes that offer the basis for addressing the multiple drivers of conflict.
The report titled “The Role of Education in Peacebuilding,” was presented on 9 February, to a packed room of United Nations experts, donors, human rights activists and aid workers.
“Education can do so much and play a vital and transformative role in societies through peacebuilding,” said Mario Novelli of the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex, who led the study together with Alan Smith of the University of Ulster. The study, managed by UNICEF’s Evaluation Office, was commissioned by UNICEF’s Education Section as part of its five-year Dutch-funded Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) Programme.
According to the findings, education can intervene during conflicts through emergency schooling for displaced people and schools as zones of peace, in the immediate post-war period through school reconstruction and psycho-social support and in the medium-term post-conflict period through development and curricula reform.
“We must invest as much in prevention as in post-conflict situations ….invest in systems to overcome obstacles as much as in challenges…invest in people and therefore the norms that entrench them that go beyond peacebuilding and peace keeping,” said Nicholas Alipui, UNICEF’s Director of Programmes, opening the event.
Mr. Alipui thanked the Dutch government for its steadfast support and strong partnership during UNICEF’s EEPCT programme and its transition into a new education and peacebuilding programme.
“Peacebuilding is central to achieving progress in the Millennium Development Goals,” said Corien Sips of the Government of the Netherlands. “And we believe education is a core component in building sustainable peace.”
In 2011, a research team set out to collect evidence on how education interventions could have a stronger role in the UN peacebuilding architecture and, more specifically, how UNICEF can contribute effectively to peacebuilding through education.
Among the key findings were that the concept of peacebuilding remains underdeveloped and contested, even among UN agencies; security concerns dominate peacebuilding and marginalizes the role of education; weak, inequitable and segregated school systems can be and often are drivers of conflict.
Zeena Zakharia of the Columbia University and Mr. Smith were a part of the panel, while UNICEF’s Director of Emergency Operations, Louis-George Arsenault also spoke at the event.
Mr. Novelli said that UNICEF was well placed to make interventions in peacebuilding given its high level of credibility, strong civil society partnerships, its reputation as a lead agency in education and its rich national staff working in the field.
Key recommendations:
Develop a comprehensive policy paper on UNICEF’s commitment to peacebuilding.
Identify areas of common agreement with global partners on the contribution of education to peacebuilding in conflict-affected countries.
Carry out a short study to explore the extent to which UNICEF is integrated within UN peacebuilding, challenges and opportunities.
Capacity support for peacebuilding and conflict analysis within HQ and field offices.
At the outset, introduce education and peacebuilding in a limited number of countries.
Place greater emphasis on knowledge management and institutional learning.
The panelists commended UNICEF for already instituting changes in its education programming based on its recommendation and getting a head start, which they said reflected the organization’s commitment to peacebuilding.
“UNICEF is uniquely placed not only in delivering services but in community development,” said Susan Durston, Associate Director, Education Section in her closing remarks, “This new programming is going to help us not only to be more strategic but to also focus on our equity approach by drawing attention to the underprivileged and marginalized who are most at risk during conflict situations.”
To view the reports and listen to a podcast that discusses the role of education in building sustainable peace, click here.
Laura Wright, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
Education in emergencies (EiE) is both a research “field in its infancy” and a rapidly “emerging field” (Tomlinson and Benefield, 2005). This scoping study reviews a wide range of academic articles and grey literature in the education in emergencies field to map current and past research methodologies used by academics and practitioners. It identifies the unique successes and gaps in the evidence base in order to support future academics and practitioners in conducting and documenting research. This study concludes that ensuring sound ethical and rigorous reflective research practices is critical to fill research gaps, and to move EiE from infancy to a well-developed, reputable research field.
Introduction
Education in emergencies (EiE) is a research “field in its infancy” (Tomlinson and Benefield, 2005). Over the past decade, academics‘ and practitioners‘ interest in the challenges of educating children affected by emergencies--natural disasters (e.g. hurricanes, typhoons, floods) and human made crisis (e.g. war, internal conflict , and genocide) (Kagawa, 2010)--has grown rapidly. As EiE is still an ‗emerging field‘ (Seitz, 2004; Sinclair, 2002; Sommers, 2005; UNICEF, 2006) documentation of quality research with credible methodologies at both the macro and meso level exists but is limited. Thus, there is a pertinent need to establish a sound professional research foundation to examine the effect of emergencies on education at different stages of emergency (INEE 2010). This desk study will provide an overview of current and past evidence generating activities within the field of education in emergencies, while focusing specifically on research methodologies. The study will determine gaps and analyze the successes and challenges of the methodologies identified in the research within this field of knowledge.
Join me on a personal and professional journey in the Ituri region of the Congo as I work with Sports4Hope to implement a sports and peace education program in conflict affected communities. By Selina Coleman.
Human Rights in Congo??? For the past 4 months I have been working in Congo with an organization called Sports4HOPE (http://www.sports4HOPE.org). Sports4HOPE is an organization that seeks to bring about peace and reconciliation to conflict affected areas through sports and peace education. We have been facilitating peace education sessions in 3 communities that were involved in a massacre in 2003. In our recent peace education sessions we have been focusing on human rights education. Human rights education is one of the many fields of peace education that also includes conflict resolution education, disarmament education, critical peace education, multicultural education and environmental education. These sessions on human rights education have proven to be extremely challenging for me because I know and many of our committee members know that Congo has a long way to go in terms of achieving human rights for its citizens. Decades of war, bad governance, and corruption have fueled a lack of respect for human rights and thus created a pessimistic attitude towards the government and its ability or desire to really help its people.
The government’s lack of respect for human rights was vocally expressed by many of our committee members. This was evident through comments such as, “In Congo, there are no human rights.”, “I do not want to be Congolese because there are too many problems here.”, “You cannot trust the government.”, “The government is lying when it says it has put programs in place to promote human rights.” These are all statements that based on what I have read, seen, heard and understood about Congo; seem to be true, at least to some extent. Given all of the reports of violence during the election, and recent reports we have heard of human rights abuses in the area, it is easy to see why our committee members feel this way.
As the facilitator I felt challenged to provide some hope and optimism during these sessions for the committee members as well as for myself. No one wants to leave a class feeling depressed and feeling like the situation is so hopeless that there is nothing that can be done. I found myself thinking, it would be much easier to teach this in the US or maybe I will just skip this part of the training so that I do not have to deal with uncomfortable questions or questions that I cannot answer. I am never really sure which way the discussions will go and although I do try to prepare for them as much as I can, I can’t possibly imagine all the potential outcomes of the sessions. Utilizing the Peace Education Program through the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE http://www.ineesite.org/post/peace_education_programme/) and the Teacher’s Without Borders Curriculum (http://www.twb.org), I was able to provide the foundations of human rights education as well as activities for our committee members regarding human rights. We discussed how being educated about your rights is only one component of human rights education. Human rights education also focuses on the responsibilities of individuals to stand up for the rights of others. These responsibilities are emphasized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but even more so in the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights. Although we can agree that the government in Congo is not doing all that it can and should do, we also have the responsibility as individuals to do what we can and should do.
In the end, the committee members and I did find hope. We found hope in examples of people that have paved the way for us to be where we are today and to make a difference in the world. We found hope in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi and their non-violent fight for civil rights. We found hope in the fact that today women around the world and in the communities in which we are working have achieved many things that were not possible years ago. We found hope in Synergie Simama, our partnering organization and Kalongo, the director of the organization. Kalongo has dedicated his life to community development and helping to make Congo a better place despite the lack of assistance from the government. We even found hope in Mobuto, the authoritarian leader that ruled Congo for over 30 years. The committee members stated that during Mobuto’s time, there was a sense of nationalism and a spirit of patriotism that focused on being a part of one Congo rather than being divided by tribes and cultures. Most importantly, we found hope in ourselves as individuals and as members of a team working together for change. This is the message that I hope to be able to continue to inspire in the lives of people that I meet as well as my own life.
Currently, more than 1.5 billion people live in fragile and conflict-affected states. Children living in armed conflict are subject to violence, deprived of basic needs and robbed of developmental opportunities, including a quality education. A recent report, The Role of Education in Peacebuilding: A synthesis report of findings from Lebanon, Nepal and Sierra Leone, commissioned by UNICEF and written by Mario Novelli of the University of Sussex and Alan Smith of the University of Ulster, provides evidence that education can be a catalyst for peace and highlights the need for education sectors to integrate a peacebuilding perspective.
To discuss the findings of the report and the role of education in building sustainable peace, podcast moderator Kathryn Herzog spoke with Mr. Novelli, author of the report; Jim Rogan, UNICEF’s Chief of Peacebuilding and Recovery Section; and Louise Anten, Head of the Education and Research Division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of the Netherlands.
Before the quake, 55 per cent of children were missing out on their right to an education. Despite post-disaster efforts to return children to the classroom, many remain out of school. Additionally, issues related to child development receive little attention, especially outside urban areas.
To highlight the challenges faced by youth, UNICEF and partners PANOS Caribbean and Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables are providing media training to vulnerable children. In these trainings, young people learn how to use radio and video equipment, write reports and take pictures to bring attention to the needs and challenges facing their peers.
UNICEF moderator Femi Oke discussed this innovative program with three of its organizers: Margarette Altidor, President of Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables; Jean-Jacques Simon, UNICEF Haiti Chief of Communication; and Jan Voordouw, Programme Coordinator of PANOS Caribbean.
Youth participation
According to Mr. Simon, the project has successfully helped children address their concerns about education, health sanitation and other aspects of day-to-day life.
“We have created unique productions where you can understand what the children of Haiti are going through,” said Mr. Simon. “The scars are not completely healed, and one of the goals here is to prepare youth for the future. Building the future of this country is one big challenge, but it’s a challenge that youth must be part of.”
Discussing opportunities for young people, Mrs. Altidor called on Haitian institutions to play a bigger role in training and educating young people. “It’s not only a job for the international organizations, but Haitian organizations, too. Young people in Haiti should try to do their best,” said Mrs. Altidor.
In December 2011 we launch Youth, Skills & Work, a new blog where young people can make their voices heard on education and skills needed to get decent jobs. Youth, Skills & Work is open to young people around the world. You can submit text, a photo, a drawing, a poem, or join the conversation by commenting on what others have contributed.
We are gathering opinions from young people as part of our work preparing the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which will focus on the chronic mismatch between education systems and labour markets that plagues many regions of the world.
Young people who never attended school, who left early or who left without the skills needed to thrive in literate societies, are particularly vulnerable. The 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report will ask what kinds of policies are needed to give all young people – regardless of where they live, or their gender, ethnicity or wealth – access to employment-relevant training to help them gain access to secure work that pays a living wage.
What do you think about the need for skills and training? Share your thoughts, questions, solutions and experiences at Youth, Skills & Work.
And pass on the word to friends! You can also share the movie clip above.
Jake Scobey-Thal is an associate in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
We told the children not to enter the building because the soldiers had weapons everywhere,” an official explained as he pointed to the corner of a government office where the soldiers had stacked guns. The troops had arrived in Gueday, a small village in the Cordillera Autonomous Region in northern Luzon, Philippines, in April 2010, just before the national elections.
As we sat in the village’s municipal hall, local officials described the military’s four-month stay, gesturing around the building the soldiers had transformed into a barracks. The officials squabbled over the size of the detachment (eventual consensus was approximately 15) and recalled how the troops gave out goods (canned food mostly). They pointed us to the basketball hoop the detachment built and the yard where soldiers would conduct morning exercises with the children.
But after the second cup of coffee, they revealed that the municipal hall was actually the second structure the detachment had used as a camp. For the first three months of their stay, the soldiers had occupied the smaller of the two buildings that make up the local elementary school.
The Philippine government is engaged in a long-running armed conflict with the insurgent New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. While the NPA maintains a presence in the mountains of northern Luzon, there has only been limited military action in the Cordillera region since the 1990s. Despite the low levels of conflict, the military continues to place troops and guns in local communities. And in some cases these troops and their guns establish a home on school grounds.
During our eight-day investigation in November, Human Rights Watch documented five cases in which the military had used parts of functioning schools in the area as encampments for military detachments since 2009. School administrators, principals, and teachers described the troubling dynamics of running a school on top of, adjacent to, and occasionally within, de facto military barracks.
The first thing we saw as we approached Sadanga High School was the military sentry overlooking the access road. The lone entrance to the school opens up to a large courtyard, surrounded by individual classrooms. A school official told us that at one point the army had placed an armed guard at the entrance, but on the day we visited the soldiers were confined to a patch of land across the yard.
Local officials assured us the land the soldiers used was actually private, adjacent to the government-owned school grounds. While a portion of the camp was built behind the school on land that could, conceivably, be independently owned, we observed that at least part of the detachment—two soldiers, their sleeping quarters, and a 3x3 camouflaged military truck—sat well within school property.
The camp sits directly across the courtyard from the school’s one entrance. In order to leave the base, the soldiers - even those encamped on the ostensibly private land – must cross the school grounds. If a firefight were to occur, students and staff could well be caught in the middle.
At Sadanga, soldiers explained that they were on a “civilian-military operation.” Their mission is not combat related, they said, but rather focused on community development. The local mayor consented to their occupation, though in the Philippines sometimes local officials find it difficult to refuse the military’s requests.
The Philippines military has had a tenuous relationship with the indigenous communities of the Cordilleras owing to the legacy of Marcos-era abuses and ongoing violations by military forces in the efforts to dismantle the communist insurgency. The NPA has also committed abuses against the local population. Civilian-military operations, such as the one at Sadanga, are part of a larger government strategy to engage indigenous communities and isolate the NPA—an effort to “win hearts and minds.” Human Rights Watch saw these types of projects in a number of schools we visited.
While some people expressed unqualified contempt for the soldiers, many not only tolerated, but appreciated the military’s presence. In Sadanga, the soldiers built an office for the school nurse and led a Boy Scout troop; in another school, soldiers had maintained a small vegetable garden.
However, the question remains: Why are the soldiers in the schools?
As the soldiers at Sadanga High noted, the military occupation of schools is banned under Philippine law, and can violate international humanitarian and human rights law—and for good reason. The presence of soldiers endangers students and staff and disrupts education. The occupation of educational facilities also makes the school a legitimate target for insurgent forces. Human Rights Watch has documented the bombing of schools as part of insurgency tactics in India, Afghanistan, and southern Thailand. In the Philippines, teachers reported that students often interact with the soldiers, and with only a few staff members, schools do not have the resources to supervise these interactions. Teachers described instances in which students ran errands for the detachment, joined soldiers in their barracks to eat lunch and watch “bang bang” movies, and ran up to soldiers to touch their guns.
A teacher in Gueday ¬– one of four who taught while the military was encamped in the school - spoke highly of the troops. She recalled the morning exercises the soldiers led with the students and the help the soldiers provided in cleaning the school. We asked her why, after three months, the soldiers had left the library and moved to the municipal hall. She replied matter-of-factly, “The community asked them to leave… The danger to the students.”
If the government is serious about putting an end to military abuses in the north, it should protect students and teachers by ordering the armed forces to respect the law and to stay out of educational facilities. The military will not win hearts and minds by putting schools in the line of fire.
INEE and The Sphere Project are pleased to announce that the Companionship Agreement between the two entities has been renewed. The Agreement recognizes the INEE Minimum Standards as Companion and Complementary Standards to the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. The continued use of the INEE Minimum Standards alongside the Sphere Standards will help to ensure that crucial linkages between education and traditional sectors are made at the outset of an emergency - through contingency planning, multi-sectoral needs assessments and holistic response. Used together, the two good practices tools help improve the quality of humanitarian assistance, enhance the predictability and accountability of disaster preparedness and response, and improve coordination among humanitarian actors.
Through the Companionship Agreement, "both Parties recognize that education in emergencies is a necessity that can be both life-sustaining and life-saving, providing physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection. Education in emergencies is an integral component of humanitarian aid alongside assistance in water and sanitation, health, nutrition, shelter and protection. The right to education is both a human right, which applies even in emergencies, and an enabling right, allowing people to exercise their other rights, such as the right to health and the right to life with dignity."
Signed in 2008, the original Companionship Agreement established a formal relationship between INEE and The Sphere Project. As part of the Agreement, INEE Secretariat and the Sphere Project staff mainstreamed education in the revised Sphere Handbook as well as inter-sectoral linkages in the updated INEE Minimum Standards Handbook. The renewed Agreement further strengthens the collaboration between the two entities at all levels, including the Sphere Board and the INEE Steering Group. To access the full Agreement, click here.
The Sphere Project was created to improve the quality and accountability of disaster response. It promotes the universal right of all disaster-affected people to life with dignity, protection and humanitarian assistance. The Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response represents sector-wide consensus on minimum standards, key technical indicators and guidance covering four life-saving areas of humanitarian aid: water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion; food security and nutrition; shelter, settlement and non-food items; and health action.
The INEE Minimum Standards Handbook is an expression of commitment that all individuals - children, youth and adults - have a right to education during emergencies. The Standards articulate the minimum level of educational quality and access in emergencies through to recovery.
For more information about The Sphere Project and its Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, visit http://www.sphereproject.org. For more information on the INEE Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery, visit http://www.ineesite.org/standards.To learn more about the INEE-Sphere Project Companionship, visit INEE's website. To access tools on education and inter-sectoral linkages, visit the INEE Toolkit. To share how you have used the INEE Minimum Standards Handbook and the Sphere Handbook, please contact Tzvetomira Laub at tzvetomira@ineesite.org and Aninia Nadig at aninia.nadig@ifrc.org.
Evidence shows that learning to read at an early age is one of the strongest indicators that a person will develop the skills they need to lead a healthy life, earn a productive salary, and contribute positively to the economic growth of a community. Yet millions of students today are finishing primary school without being able to read basic words. We need game-changing solutions that increase the availability and effectiveness of literacy teaching and learning materials and that improve education data for accountability and smarter decision-making. The opportunity before us has never been more clear: We need to harness the creative, practical, and inventive powers of the crowd- yes, that's you- to generate significantly better results for children. Here's how you can participate today.
1) Submit your idea to address childhood literacy by applying for the challenge. Applications will be accepted through January 31st at 2 pm EST/19:00 GMT. Visit http://www.allchildrenreading.org/apply to learn about the application guidelines and eligibility requirements. You can download the Request for Applications (RFA) with full guidelines here. We have also attached a brief overview of the RFA (please use the entire RFA to guide your submissions). Organizations with winning submissions will be eligible for as much as $300,000, provided by USAID, AusAID, and World Vision.
The competition is open for submissions now until January 31st at 2pm EST/ 19:00 GMT
2) Spread the word about the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development competition! And encourage people to submit! Don't be shy. Share the challenge website and mission with your friends, families, media contacts, and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter (#allchildrenreading, #usaid), other social networking sites, your university connections, and regular community outlets. Your network may include people and organizations who can help us to achieve better results together.
Her sister and friends designed and made postcards to sell in the streets. In less than 7 weeks, they had raised enough money to buy the wheelchair. Realizing that their efforts had even greater potential, they decided to continue working on behalf of other children with disabilities. They also began fight for the rights and inclusion of children with disabilities all over South Africa.
For the past 4 months I have been working in Congo with an organization called Sports4HOPE (
Jake Scobey-Thal is an associate in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
INEE and The Sphere Project are pleased to announce that the Companionship Agreement between the two entities has been renewed. The Agreement recognizes the INEE Minimum Standards as Companion and Complementary Standards to the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. The continued use of the INEE Minimum Standards alongside the Sphere Standards will help to ensure that crucial linkages between education and traditional sectors are made at the outset of an emergency - through contingency planning, multi-sectoral needs assessments and holistic response. Used together, the two good practices tools help improve the quality of humanitarian assistance, enhance the predictability and accountability of disaster preparedness and response, and improve coordination among humanitarian actors.
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